Steve Borthwick's England face the Springboks this summer with the residue of a record-poor Six Nations still hanging in the air, and the squad-picking parlour game has reached fever pitch. The latest contribution comes from RugbyAnalyst on YouTube, who used his weekly Q&A to revise his earlier 23 in light of viewer feedback, the Champions Cup semi-finals and a handful of mid-season returnees.
The biggest reset is at lock. RugbyAnalyst conceded he had been too harsh in dropping Maro Itoje from his starting team, and put the British and Irish Lions captain straight back in for the South Africa match-up.
"Maybe too harshly dropping Itoje out of the starting team," he said. "He probably needed a rest, he needs to get back fully fit, and yeah, probably does start against South Africa. We need his experience, his size, his strength. That was probably a bit of a rash call there."
With Itoje restored and George Martin's return from injury accounted for, RugbyAnalyst's second-row stocks now look meaningfully different. He flagged that Martin should come straight back into the wider 36-man squad, replacing Courtney Lawes, who had been a placeholder pick driven less by form than by the absence of any obvious alternative.
"I had Lawes in there because I didn't really fancy anyone else at the level to come into the England squad," he said. "Now we've got some youngsters — Clark, for example — but I don't quite see it yet. So I had Lawes in there at a bit of a punt, and now Martin is fit. Martin does go back in there."
The ripple from Itoje's return runs into the back row. Ollie Chessum, who had been pencilled in at 4 in earlier drafts, slides to 6 — a shift RugbyAnalyst said reflects both Chessum's 80-minute engine and the slow start to the season for one of the rival blindside options at Bath.
"Cunningham-South hasn't quite fired yet," he said. "I thought it'd explode a bit more, and hasn't quite. So Ollie Chessum at 6, but Itoje back into the starting team, with Alex Coles and George Martin on the bench getting a bit more beef in there for South Africa."
The captaincy stays with Chessum, even with Itoje back. RugbyAnalyst said the long-term thinking — leadership pathway plus reliability across an 80-minute test — kept the armband where it was.
The punt of the squad sits at openside. RugbyAnalyst stuck with Henry Pollock at 7, framing the call as both a calculated risk and a deliberate statement of intent against the world champions.
"One fairly big call I would stick with, though, is Henry Pollock," he said. "I think we need a bit of stardust against South Africa as well. Put him at 7, not at 8, and let Henry Pollock do his thing. It's a bit of a punt, but I think we need that magic. I think he's better over the ball than people give him credit for. He's incredibly quick. He can recover. He can tackle. He can get out there, be a pain. Hopefully catch on the right side of the law — but I think we need that."
RugbyAnalyst added that he had not seen enough from rival opensides to dislodge Pollock, and that the bench had been built around a 6-2 split with power impact rather than coverage in mind.
The backline survives the rework largely intact. Alex Mitchell stays at 9, with Marcus Smith named at 10 and Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence retained in midfield. Lawrence is the controlled gamble, RugbyAnalyst suggested, prone to the occasional error but one of the few centres in the squad who can genuinely fold a Springbok midfield. The back three of Tommy Freeman, George Furbank and a third specialist outside back is described as the strongest available combination, with Marcus Smith earmarked for the bench to cover both 10 and 15.
Notably absent from the starting 23 is teenage Saracens wing Noah Caluori, despite a vocal viewer push to fast-track him for the South Africa series.
"He's 19 years old," RugbyAnalyst said. "I do think he's got plenty to work on — body position, decisions, sometimes positioning. He's got the talent. He will play for England, I just don't think there's a rush. Maybe you have him in the squad training. He needs to keep on learning. For me, not quite now."
The revised 23 is, on balance, a defensive document. It picks experience where the choice is close, recalls returning bodies before pushing fresh ones, and saves its single audacious selection for the openside flank where Borthwick himself may yet land. Whether that proves bold enough to topple the back-to-back world champions in July is another question — but, RugbyAnalyst argued, it is at least a 23 that gives England a fighting chance of the upset.
Source: RugbyAnalyst YouTube, 'IMPROVED ENGLAND 23 v SPRINGBOKS? Responding to viewer feedback!', 6 May 2026.
