The English Team v Fiji – Fall International Rugby Preview

Similar to the silver birches around my home during this season, England in the autumn are a mixed offering. Their appeal stems from transformations and natural progress, before the inevitable atrophying dumps of loads of mess all over the place that you must spend weeks clearing up in a foul mood. Plus, the rain has begun to fall.

England's coach Steve Borthwick aims to transform this scenario and it’s started OK for him. The opening win over Australia in this year’s November marks an improvement compared to last year, when three miserable losses were punctuated by a bog-standard win over Japan as the full stop in the final week. Much was made amidst the post-series malaise regarding how the initial matches against New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa made the schedule overly challenging, with a momentum of misery accompanying each week’s result. In 2025 lessons have been learned, with the success against the Wallabies leading into the current match with Fiji as a chance to consolidate the positive vibes.

England has fielded a significantly altered lineup from the previous week, which given the class sprinkled throughout the Fiji squad could be be seen as hubris from Borthwick. But, while the islanders are no mugs by any measure, they are perennial strugglers in this fixture. A win in the 2023 World Cup warm up games their solitary victory in nine tests vs today’s opposition.

The English side is widely regarded as the most efficient in dispatching opponents they ought to overcome easily; they remain the only side undefeated by Italy in the Six Nations for example, and they seldom fall to lower-tier nations.