The art of selection Borthwick's autumn requires balance, gut feel and clarity for England to prosper

Rugby union has bid adieu to two significant figures in recent days. Today's players may not be overly familiar with Kevin Bowring, the first professional head coach of Wales between 1995-98, or Ronnie Dawson, who led the British & Irish Lions to a famous win against the All Blacks in 1959 and later became Ireland's first national coach, but both helped to change their sport for the better.

- Robert Kitson

Dawson, among myriad roles, was a member of the committee that organised the first Rugby World Cup while Bowring was a mentor to many of modern rugby's most thoughtful coaches and educators from Stuart Lancaster and Shaun Edwards to Ben Ryan and Toby Booth. Lancaster reckoned Bowring had few peers - "I really think the world has lost one of the great coaching minds" - and Ryan felt likewise: "[He] pushed my thinking upstream, when as a young coach I only ever swam downstream."

Another of his proteges, Russell Earnshaw, put it even more lyrically. "If coaching is about your coaching tree, Kevin planted forests. If it's about the ripples you create he threw boulders in the lake. If it's about the footprint you leave he took a million steps." Bowring's great gift was to open minds to previously unimagined possibilities and lift young coaches' eyes up to the hills.

Which is perhaps more important in the professional era. The pressure for results can be all-consuming and not everything can be easily micromanaged. As the England men's head coach, Steve Borthwick, has been finding. He must have flown home from New Zealand in July thinking he had weathered the worst of a turbulent year. Within weeks he had parted company with Aled Walters and Felix Jones, who had done more than most to establish an upbeat mood in the camp.