England’s to-do list for Six Nations: Defence, Marcus Smith and more

Joe El-Abd is the man tasked with finding answers to those questions.

The 44-year-old, a former university housemate of Borthwick’s, has been in place as defence coach for a little over a month.

But, now the autumn internationals are over, his focus is elsewhere.

On Friday, he will be fulfilling his head coach duties for French second-tier side Oyonnax against Stade Montois as part of a job-sharing agreement struck by the Rugby Football Union.

The unusual arrangement is partly a product of the haste with which the RFU needed to replace Irishman Felix Jones who quit as defence coach in August, after only seven months in the post.

With Jones being held to a 12-month notice period, England are left in the situation that they have two defence coaches on the books; one, with no previous international experience, juggling two jobs, the other, with experience of winning back-to-back Rugby World Cups, seemingly under-employed as he remotely feeds into England’s analysts.

“Joe El-Abd’s appointment was left field and his team [currently 14th out of 16] is not doing that well in the second division of France,” said former England wing Chris Ashton on Rugby Union Weekly.

“He is part time and England’s defence is not looking great.”

Grayson believes the situation is in part of England’s making, with change the only constant in the coaching set-up, two years on from Borthwick replacing Eddie Jones.

“There has been so much change with England in terms of backroom staff that it is very difficult to stay on message when the message changes all the time,” he said.

“How can you get consistency?

“And do you get any dispensation for the amount of change? Or do you look and say why have those people gone?

“Clearly in any business the turnover of that many staff will have an impact on the output of the people doing it.”