Mike Catt on facing familiar face Steve Borthwick and what to expect from England 

Ireland will travel to Twickenham next weekend. 

Ireland's assstnat coach Mike Catt during a training session at the Aviva Stadium.

It was September of 2001 and just days after Bath’s 48-9 savaging by Leicester Tigers when Mike Catt sat with the media and tore into some of his younger teammates on the back of what had been the club’s fourth straight league defeat.

European champions less than three years earlier and a club that had so recently won six leagues in eight seasons, they would finish that campaign second from bottom but some of those fresher faces escaped Catt’s wrath that day.

Among those given public passes was a 21-year old Steve Borthwick.

The pair of them spent the bones of their respective careers at the Recreation Ground. Six years they shared the same dressing-room and their paths crossed again when Borthwick was an assistant coach with England and Catt was part of the Italian brains trust.

Saturday week will be their third time to meet since Borthwick accepted the hot potato that is the role of England head coach and it will be Catt’s job again as Ireland’s attack guru to find the scores that put paid to any talk of a revived Red Rose.

Catt smiled yesterday and searched briefly for the right word to describe Borthwick’s approach to rugby. He eventually landed on obsessive. Coaching, he explained, was always going to be the younger man’s path.

“I had him as a 17/18 year-old when he turned up at Bath and he'd be out on the pitch with me for a lot of hours. He only wanted to be the best he could be. That's probably what he has taken into his coaching stuff as well.

"So he is relatively new at it but, you know, he's had a lot of experience under Eddie Jones [with England] and he's been at the highest level in terms of the player too, so he fully understands it.” But does he ‘get’ it?

Parachuted in to the role just weeks before the 2023 Six Nations, it was all Borthwick could do but to try and stabilise the foundations. To be fair, they made Ireland sweat on the last day before Andy Farrell’s men clinched the Grand Slam in Dublin.

The subsequent World Cup produced a long – and easy - run to the semi-final where they almost shocked the Springboks but the rugby played continued to be uninspiring and they have managed mere flashes of anything better so far in this Championship.

Opening wins against Italy and Wales provided evidence enough of the long road they still have to travel. The nine-point defeat up in Scotland only deepened the impression of a team that has yet to find an identity with ball in hand, let alone implement one.

“Yeah, they are not going to make as many errors as they did against Scotland, believe me, they are not going to let that happen again. They are going to be a much better side than they were against Scotland and we've got to prepare ourselves for it."

Better? They better be.

England recorded 25 handling errors and gave up 22 turnovers in Murrayfield. Their average points return per ‘22’ visit stands around two under Borthwick. Ireland’s, by way of complete contrast, is twice that and Ireland keep telling us that they need to do better.

One team is preparing the icing, the other is still looking for the ingredients.

“They’ve got a lot to work on in terms of their defence and their attack,” said Catt. “It’s not just one thing that they need to do, so they’ll get there and it’s four or five weeks into the competition now and they’ll get better and better each week.

It’s the nature of sports fans and the media that we tend to focus more on attack - take Simon Easterby’s stunning job as defence coach with Ireland which is rarely mentioned - but the presence of Felix Jones in the England coaching box changes that here.

The former Munster man has imported the Springbok blitz defence wholesale from his days under Rassie Erasmus and this at a time when Jacques Nienaber, the system’s godfather, is drilling the same ideas into the minds of so many of Ireland’s players at Leinster.

Catt hasn’t sat down with Nienaber for any hints and tips but he has been having plenty of chats with some among his Leinster contingent as they face up to a white wall that he believes will be “helter skelter” in its line speed.

Ireland have scored 15 tries in their three Championship games to date and Nienaber’s claim that it takes either 14 weeks or 14 games to fully fit the new system suggests there will be more opportunities with ball in hand as England bed theirs down.

“There’s always opportunities” said Catt, “but whether you can take them is another thing. So, it might take them seven games, it might take them four games, it might take them 20 games, but we’ll just play the pitch that’s in front of us and we’ll go from there.”