Martin Johnson tells England veteran to give Steve Borthwick World Cup ‘nightmare’

Martin Johnson is pleased to hear Courtney Lawes throw his hat back in the ring for England and has called on the veteran lock to help make Steve Borthwick’s selection process a ‘nightmare’ ahead of next year’s World Cup.

Lawes announced he would be bringing his illustrious international career to an end in the wake of the 2023 World Cup, with England’s agonising semi-final defeat at the hands South Africa representing his last appearance for his country.

But in April, the 37-year-old confirmed he was ‘officially unretiring from international duty’ as he reacquainted himself with the English game to join Sale Sharks after a two-year spell with French outfit Brive.

A ferocious competitor with a never-say-die attitude, Lawes will undoubtedly be itching to pull on that famous white jersey again. However, he must first put in the hard yards in the Prem and will be all too aware of the fierce level of competition he is up against in England’s second row and back row.

All eyes were on the CorpAcq Stadium on Saturday afternoon as the former Northampton Saints stalwart made his official Sale debut at home to Bristol Bears.

Uninterested in rolling out the red carpet for Lawes, though, the visitors consigned their hosts to an opening-day 34-24 defeat to ensure they returned with five points on their travels back down the M5.

With the 2027 World Cup only 12 months away, Lawes will hope there are better days on the horizon at Sale, with games coming thick and fast in the English top flight.

It wasn’t to be for Lawes as the three-time Six Nations winner was left out of England’s 36-player training camp ahead of the forthcoming Nations Championship earlier this month.

But Borthwick’s current cop of locks and back-row forwards may well have a bloodthirsty, 120 kg Shark snapping at their heels before too long.

‘Nothing is impossible,’ England’s legendary World Cup-winning captain Johnson exclusively told Metro when asked about a potential call-up for Lawes.

‘But you’d want the other players in that position to say: no, that’s not happening.

‘It’s competitive and we want it to be. The more competitive it is to get in the England team, the better for everyone and the better for us as fans.

‘You want layers of top-class players and you want the coach having a nightmare trying to pick a team because he’s got so many good players in form, fit and ready to go.

‘So if Courtney is throwing his hat in the ring, that’s fantastic. It’s up to everyone else to make sure their hat in the ring is a better hat!’

Lawes will not be the only outside bet harbouring World Cup ambitions ahead of next year’s spectacle, with Borthwick forced to whittle his squad down to a 33-man party for the trip Down Under.

Twelve months out, Henry Pollock is undoubtedly the hottest name in English rugby having forced his way into the international arena in January 2025.

Just six months on and Northampton Saints’ bright young thing had secured himself a British & Irish Lions call-up – a rapid progression through the ranks that many hopefuls will be looking to follow and replicate.

When asked to pick out any potential England bolters or left-field selections, Johnson refused to single out any specific names, but recalled how Josh Lewsey wasn’t even ‘on the radar’ before his meteoric rise to World Cup glory in 2003.

‘Thinking back to 2002, if you’d have said that Josh Lewsey was going to play in a World Cup final next year then I would have said, “Who for?”, because he’d been in an England squad but wasn’t on the radar at that point when other people were,’ he explained.

‘These things can happen and Josh wasn’t a young, young player either at that point. He had been around a little bit. 

‘Things can happen, guys will get hurt unfortunately, guys will lose form unfortunately in all countries around the world and other guys will come through.

‘Some players might come back and some young players might come through, all of these things will happen to any degree. Who it’s going to happen to, I don’t know.

‘Ideally, all those players in that team keep on proving themselves. It sounds so cliché that I don’t even like saying it but it’s absolutely true: you’ve got to keep getting yourself better, use your experiences, good and bad, to keep improving.

‘Take care of your place in the team and you help the team play better. That’s always a good thing.’

England resume their Nations Championship campaign against the Wallabies on November 8 having picked up a pair of wins over Fiji and Argentina – and a 45-21 defeat to the Springboks – during July’s three rounds of action.

There will have been a fair amount of soul-searching in the England camp on the back of a disastrous Six Nations campaign, in which Borthwick’s men finished down in fifth.

But Johnson was encouraged by England’s performance in the side’s thrilling final encounter with France and hopes the squad have enough nous and experience to drag them through their darker moments.

‘By definition, you’re playing to win the game,’ Johnson said ahead of England’s upcoming clashes with Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

‘That game against France was one of the best games of rugby I’ve ever watched but it doesn’t always go like that. We all know that.

‘Sometimes the game is different and the nature of the opposition: where and when and why? So you’ve got to try to find a win.

‘Good teams can find a way to win in all circumstances even when you’re not having a great day, whatever reason that may be, and that happens to all teams, and you can always grind out a win.

‘Grinding out a win is often, in an ugly game, a beautiful thing because it gives that team that knowledge that we can grind out a win.’

Johnson added: ‘Of course you want to win and play beautiful rugby and all the rest of it but it doesn’t always happen. And when you’re in high-pressure games, which Test matches obviously are, and then you get into World Cup matches, that increases even more.

‘The nature of the game often changes, it’s just what it is. There’s a lot of experienced players in that England group who have been to World Cups, been in semi-finals, so they’ve been involved in the biggest games in the world and they’ve got that experience. That doesn’t mean to say you’re going to win on every given Saturday.

‘A year away from a World Cup, it does add that extra little bit. You’re in the build-up really at this point. A year is a long time for a player, you could get seriously hurt and come back.

‘Some guys will come in who aren’t even in the squad, who aren’t even thought about potentially.’

Australia have endured a similarly fruitless time in recent years, burning through seven head coaches – including a second Eddie Jones spell – while failing to advance beyond the World Cup quarter-finals since their runners-up finish in 2003.

However, there are signs that the Wallabies could have dragged themselves back on course under new boss Les Kiss, who remains unbeaten after his first five matches at the helm.

On Sunday, the men in gold sent out a statement of intent to the rest of the planet as they clung on to beat world champions South Africa in a pulsating contest, despite being reduced to 11 men at one stage in Perth.

‘Australia is a great sporting country, it’s a demanding sporting country and they like winners,’ Johnson replied when asked about the importance of having a ‘strong’ Wallabies to host next year’s World Cup.

‘In 2003, they didn’t actually have that great a season until they got to the World Cup. They had some heavy defeats but they found a way to win.

‘I always think they’re very, very smart rugby players on the field, they’re good ball players, and they’re very good at minimising their weaknesses – if they have any – and maximising what they’re good at.

‘They didn’t have a strong scrum in ’03 and they nearly won a World Cup so that just goes to emphasise that.

‘If the locals are up for it and they think they’ve got a chance of winning then it’ll be a spectacle. They’ll let you know about it as well!’

Johnson, a proud patron of the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust since its launch in 2013, spoke exclusively to Metro during SADS Week with a view to raising awareness of undiagnosed heart conditions.

The charity, working in partnership with UK Coaching, are keen to encourage individuals in sport, especially coaches, to get free, life-saving sudden cardiac arrest training. People can find out more at www.ukcoaching.org.

‘The reason I got involved is my friend lost his 14-year-old boy to sudden arrhythmic death 14 years ago,’ Johnson said of his personal connection to the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust, which launched in March 2013.

‘You sort of hear about these things happening, I didn’t really know anything about it. Obviously with the work of the trust now, I do.

‘The message is simple: sudden cardiac arrests can happen to anyone at anytime. You can be at home, walking down the street, obviously we’re talking about sport here, so watching sport, coaching sport, playing sport – it could happen to you.

‘If people don’t know what to do then you’re in the hands of fate in terms of where you are. Are you seen? Does someone know what to do? Can they get a defibrillator on you and CPR delivered to you quickly enough that you’ll survive?

‘If you do then your chances of survival increase numerous fold so the message is simple: learn CPR and be comfortable that if you had to get a defibrillator onto someone that you could deliver that because it could happen.

‘If you don’t know what to do, you’re stood there ringing 999 and hoping they get there very quickly. We’ve all been on a windy sports field in the middle of nowhere watching a game and if something happens then what are you going to do?’

The ex-Leicester Tigers forward went on: ‘Unfortunately, when you speak to people, most people have a story somewhere of it happening. The more you talk about it, the more you hear these stories.

‘The message is simple: we’ve teamed up with UK Coaching, go on their website and there’s a 30-minute session you can do and ideally get a practical session in as well because it can happen.

‘It happened to me, it happened to me at home with a neighbour.

‘Me, some other neighbours and my wife, we delivered CPR and unfortunately it wasn’t a happy ending but we knew what to do, how to deliver it and we did a pretty decent job. That gave us a bit of solace.’

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