Steve Borthwick brings detailed analysis to England’s Six Nations game

Steve Borthwick, right, is facilitating Eddie Jones’s gameplan for England with post-match analysis tailored to each individual player. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

Steve Borthwick skipped the after-match function after last weekend’s victory over Ireland at Twickenham to pore over footage of the match to arm himself for the following day’s squad review.

Borthwick, who was Japan’s forwards coach under Eddie Jones, admits to being an obsessive, but in the modern game analysis is everything and there is no time for quaffing champagne when players need to be fully briefed.

“The players have now got apps for everything” he says. “When I was a player at Bath we had a VHS player in the clubhouse at The Rec and if you were going through a game you’d have to get up and press pause manually all the time; the machine did not have a remote control.

“Now players have apps where everything is on their computers. They are used to instant analysis of us or the opposition and we all watch the footage. After the Ireland game, I went through the game making notes of things I wanted to see, then looked at those specific elements and went through it again having done the detailed analysis. It is what players are used to.”

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On Saturday England face Wales, their biggest match since Jones took over in November. Victory would give them a tilt at the grand slam on the final day in Paris. Having tweaked their tactics against Ireland, not least in the way they defended lineouts, they will tailor their game for their main rivals for the title.

“Eddie is really good at making the gameplan specific to the opposition,” says Borthwick. “The bulk of it is about what we do and how we improve and a bit is the tweak towards the opposition, which Eddie does. We have made progress in the first three games but we still have work to do and are far from where we need to be.

“A big element is that our set piece has to be in sync with the rest of our play and something Eddie does incredibly well is develop a game model with nothing in isolation. We said from day one we would hook the ball at the scrum because we want the ball at the No8’s feet as quickly as possible to give him options. We are making progress in the lineout but there is still quite a bit of work to be done there.”