Welcome back to The Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times.

Alfie here, along with Alex, at the England training base on a Thursday ahead of November. Autumn internationals, Alex, getting underway this weekend. The teams are in. Both teams have been named now for the England-Australia game. We're almost there. Kick-off. Yeah, looking forward to it. So the England team was named on Tuesday. The Wallabies have named their team today. On a Thursday, we've been chatting to Richard Wigglesworth and Mara Togey today. So it's quite a lot for us to unpack here, Alex. I suppose if we wind the clock back two days ago, Tuesday, England named their team. I thought this was a fascinating team that Steve Borthwick has gone with

for this weekend. Yeah, it is really interesting. I think there's elements of risk,

but there's elements of development. And I don't just mean just giving players caps or minutes.

I mean, there's elements of evolution in where this team, he's trying to take the team. And

that's, you can see that with his

decision to put his first choice front row on the bench you can see it in his decision to move

Tommy Freeman to outside center I know he started outside center against Wales the time has come

for him to execute the strategy that he's been planning for a while there's just and then

of course when he came in, spoke to us,

he started talking about Ben Earl now being ready to start test matches at 12. Yeah. Henry Pollock training on the wing. Guy Pepper covering the backs as well. Allows him to play a 6-2 bench. There's a lot of moving parts, a lot of fascinating elements to this team. And, you know, I think part of it is,

if this was the All Blacks or Springboks first up, I'd definitely be doing all of this, but the

wallabies are not at full strength. And I think he feels this is a game that I think he needs to

win, but he can also start the evolution of this team. So, yeah, let's go.

We'll get on to the Lawrence, the Freeman stuff, Dingwall at 12, Ford at 10.

But the versatility thing was the thing for me that, and I'll re-say what I said on Monday's

pod with Will when we were up here, that I know Steve Borthwick gets some criticism.

And I think in particular some of that

criticism is valid when it comes to his individual, um, how he's dealt with some of the players

and changing captaincy or maybe even the game plan. But I think he is as bold a selector as I

have ever seen as an England head coach. And I think this team absolutely underlines that.

Yeah, Alfie, I agree with you.

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