England gamble on changes before crucial Rome clash

For members of the English nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries, a glamorous Grand Tour of Europe was almost a rite of passage.

- HARRY LATHAM-COYLE

These cultural expeditions to the continent came for adolescents just coming to an end in their education, providing a chance to broaden one's horizons and further one's development through an immersion in the artistic environments of Italy and France.

There might have been a time when Steve Borthwick imagined his squad as a sort of 21st-century Byron or Shelley, an English entity of obvious talent ready to take the next step on consecutive weekends in Rome and Paris. Reeling after back-to-back defeats to Scotland and Ireland, this short sojourn takes on an altogether different meaning - not so much a finishing school for the upwardly mobile, but instead a jaunt upon which England must halt their Six Nations slide.

Borthwick has, in recent weeks, railed against modern society's tendency for “polarity”, a tendency to lurch to extremes in reaction to each result. “If the team wins, the team is praised exceptionally. If the team loses, it is criticised exceptionally. There is very little middle ground,” he explained this week, while announcing an unprecedented 12 changes of personnel or position in his starting England side. The irony was, perhaps, lost on him.