Elara Vance is a business strategist with over 15 years of experience in corporate innovation and digital transformation, specializing in helping SMEs scale effectively.
Like the silver birches near my house at this time of year, 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. And now, precipitation has commenced.
England's coach Steve Borthwick aims to transform this scenario with a decent start already under his belt. Their initial victory against Australia this November is already better than 2024, when three miserable losses were punctuated by a bog-standard win over Japan acting as the final note in the closing week. Considerable discussion occurred during the post-series slump regarding how the initial matches against New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa made the schedule overly challenging, where a wave of disappointment followed every weekly outcome. 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.
The English squad shows many changes compared to last week's selection, and considering the talent present in the Fijian team, this might appear overconfident from Borthwick. However, even though the Fijians are far from pushovers, they are perennial strugglers in this fixture. Their lone win in nine tests against today's rivals came during the 2023 World Cup warm-ups.
England are also arguably the best team in the world at despatching teams they should not struggle against; for instance, they are the sole team never beaten by Italy in the Six Nations, with infrequent losses to second-tier teams.
Elara Vance is a business strategist with over 15 years of experience in corporate innovation and digital transformation, specializing in helping SMEs scale effectively.