England's Big Dog bench turns traditional selection on its head

Selecting your best XV to start a big rugby match feels increasingly quaint these days, as redolent of a different era as the Generation Game or Starsky & Hutch.

- Robert Kitson

To the point where you half expect to find the home teamsheet to face New Zealand this weekend has D-N-AL-G-N-E printed at the top of it. Even with the All Blacks in town, the traditional order of selection no longer applies.

Instead it is all about the endgame. On this occasion Steve Borthwick has picked six British & Irish Lions on his bench compared with four in his starting lineup. At some point around the 50th minute on Saturday there will be a mass discarding of XXL tracksuits and a fresh set of white orcs will rumble on. As South Africa’s “Bomb Squad” have long since shown, it can be hard to combat.

There is just one small snag. When you are playing against the world’s second-best team it is important to start fast as well. Sitting around awaiting the cavalry charge of Tom Curry, Ellis Genge, Henry Pollock and co will look like less of a genius idea if the All Blacks, as they were against Scotland at Murrayfield, are 17-0 ahead at halftime.

But that’s the modern way for you. And few are more expert on the subject than Borthwick, who sat out several matches as an unused England replacement in his playing days. Among them, he recalled this week, was the famous Test against New Zealand in Wellington in 2003, the night when England’s pack was reduced to six by yellow cards for Lawrence Dallaglio and Neil Back.