Steve Borthwick has named another England training squad, and for once it seems he means it. The 40-player group for the summer Test series carries seven uncapped names, fresh injuries to Finn Baxter, Ben Curry, Sam Underhill and Will Muir, and one selection that has stolen the entire headline — Bristol's Bernard Janse van Rensburg, the South Africa-born centre who qualifies for England on residency days before the opening Test.
Squidge Rugby's reaction podcast — published within hours of the squad drop — landed on Janse van Rensburg as the squad's most defensible call, not its most controversial.
"It's fine," Squidge said when asked about the eligibility row. "Nationality is a really weird concept, and especially now they've increased the rules to five years from three. If it was three years, you could do it in one World Cup cycle. Now it's five years. You have to extend multiple contracts. You have to have gone through ups and downs at a club and decided you want to stay there. Five years is probably right. That's about fair."
The Bristol centre, the podcast argued, is exactly the kind of 12 England have lacked since Manu Tuilagi disappeared into a string of injuries.
"Janse van Rensburg is more balance and more of an all-rounder, but brings you more bonfire on the gain-line," Squidge said. "Something I think England have been missing since Manu Tuilagi kind of disappeared off. And indeed beforehand, when he was injured for about 86 years. Eddie was in denial about it. Yeah, everyone was in denial about it, mate. Like four successive England coaches staked their careers on Tuilagi being fit, and it was clear he was never going to be."
The analysis flagged something else: a cap for Janse van Rensburg locks him to England for three years and effectively removes him from Springbok contention.
"If you cap him you lock him down for three years," Squidge noted. "That takes him out of Springbok contention and there is a very good chance, I reckon, that Rassie just gives him a phone call. He's well within his rights to do that."
Both co-hosts dismissed the wider critique of Janse van Rensburg's eligibility as cleaner than the social-media noise implied — citing Bundee Aki, Will Hooley, and the children of legacy imports already on national pathways.
"The thing about life that I realised when I was about 12 is most things are shades of grey," Squidge said. "Very little is black and white. Other than Gaza, England and the All Blacks, very little is black and white. Most things are complicated, the more you will enjoy the world because you won't be angry."
Beyond the headline, the squad's quieter stories matter just as much. Bath hooker Kepu Tuipulotu, long earmarked at Bath as a finishing 16, finally arrives. Henry Pollock continues his run as Borthwick's de-facto specialist 20-21 replacement back-rower. Northampton's Archie McParland, who tore Bristol apart for 90 points at the weekend with a man-of-the-match performance, jumps the queue in a five-scrum-half setup that also includes Alex Mitchell, Ben Spencer, Charlie Bracken and Tom Williams.
"McParland gives you an option for a second Alex Mitchell," the podcast said. "He is someone who can fill that role and it doesn't make a wider [difference] unless Mitchell gets injured, in which case he jumps the queue."
Of the bigger absentees, Squidge took the calmest view of Owen Farrell's omission — reading it as Borthwick playing the Eddie Jones George Ford card in 2022 reverse.
"There's a very small part of me that thinks Borthwick's just saving him back for the World Cup," Squidge said. "This was the thing, right? Eddie Jones left George Ford out of an England squad because he wanted to give Marcus Smith every minute of game time he could to get him ready for a World Cup. The moment Farrell got injured, even though Farrell was the starting 12, he called up George Ford."
The parallel: keep Farrell out of the spotlight, the boos, and the pundit pile-on until he is most needed in 2027.
"If you look at all of England's problems, a disproportionate number of them are solved by bringing in Owen Farrell — game management, leadership, bit of physicality, the backline feeling more coherent, all the things that were wrong in the Six Nations," Squidge added. "But there's no point firing him. There's no one lined up the way he was himself when Eddie went."
Max Ojomoh's omission, meanwhile, drew more frustration than Farrell's. Man of the match against Argentina in autumn, scoring a try, setting up several more — and now passed over for both the Six Nations and the summer training squad.
"That is perplexing," the podcast said. "There may be something in his game that Borthwick is picking up on and clearly Yan van Graan is picking up on, if he's picking Louis Hennessy ahead of him. But it is a surprise he isn't in."
The final pieces: Adam Radwan back in for the first time since November 2021 after Tigers form, Henry Arundell dropped for what Borthwick called development reasons, and George Furbank returning at fullback. The summer squad will narrow further before England's opening Test against France XV in June and the South Africa tour that follows. For now, the case Squidge made was the one the wider rugby public seems most willing to ignore: this is a squad picked on form, not heritage, and the man whose presence has split Twitter in half is precisely the player England's centres have been crying out for.
