England’s senior assistant coach was asked about Courtney Lawes this week and said he would have to go “over and above” the players already in the squad. Which means a Courtney Lawes England recall is not close.
Lawes is 37. He came out of international retirement, left France and signed for Sale specifically to make himself selectable again. This week he was not in the camp.
Respect, or a polite no? Settle it in the comments.
He retired from England after the 2023 World Cup with 105 caps, won the Gallagher PREM with Northampton the following spring, and then left the Premiership for Brive, in the French second division, for two years. Joe Marchant, 30, has made the same move home, arriving at Sale from Stade Français on a contract to 2029 after more than fifty appearances in the Top 14. Both became eligible the moment they pulled on a Sale shirt, which they did against Bath in round one of the PREM Rugby Cup.
Marchant was not invited to the camp either.
“They would have to go over and above”
Wigglesworth, England’s senior assistant coach, was asked about them by the Guardian’s Gerard Meagher and gave the warm answer first.
“It is great to have [Courtney] back, [he has] unbelievable experience, [he’s] an England legend and he is back in pre-season, as everyone is, flying,” he said. “There is a real excitement about watching him back in the Prem so I am enjoying that.”
Then the actual message.
“We want as much quality as we can have in the league but they are going to have to go and play well because there are some good players in the room and to put them in you have to leave someone else out, so they would have to go over and above that I would say.”
Read that last clause again. Not play well. Not remind the coaches. Go over and above the men already selected, because a recall is not an addition, it is a subtraction from somebody else’s season.
The autumn squad is expected in late October. The league starts before that, at a club still building combinations. Roughly five weeks of Prem rugby to beat an incumbent second row and an incumbent midfield, who will be playing the same five weeks in front of the same coaches.
Nobody says no in that answer. Nobody says yes either.
What Lawes actually still does
This gets filed under sentiment. It shouldn’t be.
Lawes was never a jumping specialist who lived off athleticism, which is the profile that falls off a cliff at 35. His value was always the collision and the read: the front-on hit that stops a carrier a metre behind where he expected to be, and the blindside cover that arrives before the second phase is set. Those are decisions. Decisions age slowly.
What he has to prove is different, and Sale’s fixture list will show it inside a month. Watch his second and third involvements in a passage of play. A 37-year-old forward does not get exposed in the tackle he makes, he gets exposed in the ruck he does not reach afterwards. If Lawes is on his feet and in the next contest, England have a bench lock for the autumn. If he is arriving a beat late to phase four, the coaches will see it on the same tape you do.
Two seasons in the French second division cut both ways. Fewer Test collisions in the legs, and far less exposure to the line speed he is about to walk back into.
Why a Courtney Lawes England recall is possible at all
The rule that let Lawes and Marchant back is the same rule that keeps Jack Willis out. England pick from England-based players. Willis has been one of the best back-row forwards in Europe at Toulouse for three seasons and has watched every Test window from France.
Lawes has been clear he believes France-based players should still be eligible. He is also the living proof of why the RFU keeps the rule: two players moved home this summer specifically because moving home is the only route back. The policy works exactly as designed, and the men it has just delivered are 37 and 30.
That is the part worth noticing. The selection door England built to bring players home has produced a returning lock in his late thirties and a centre who has not played a Test since 2023. The enhanced contracts and the control over when a player turns out for his club still go to the players already inside the system.
Read also: the RFU’s enhanced contracts pay a second salary and buy control over when a player is available, which is the system Lawes has just moved home to get back inside.
Marchant is the harder case
Marchant has 26 caps and no obvious slot.
He is a 13 who can play 12 and wing, which sounds like an asset and, in a settled England midfield, is the reason a player waits. Utility fills a hole. It has never got a starter dropped.
Three seasons at Stade Français did not blunt him. His defensive edge reading was the reason the club used him at outside centre almost every week. But the standard he must now beat is a midfield that has been chosen and built for two full seasons. Wigglesworth’s phrasing applies harder to Marchant than to Lawes, because a bench lock is a role and a fourth-choice centre is a squad number.
The one thing in his favour is timing. He is 30, not 34. Play the opening rounds the way he played in Paris and he is not asking for a farewell tour. He is asking for the next World Cup cycle. And the 2027 pool England were handed in the December draw is not one you take four uncapped centres into.
Sale have quietly built the audition stage
None of this happens without a club that decided to spend.
Lawes, Marchant and Alex Lozowski all started the same match in a Sale shirt for the first time against Bath. Alex Sanderson has assembled a squad with three England-qualified internationals added in one window, at a club that has never been the richest in the league.
Sale lose around £8m a year, and they have just spent a summer signing Test-standard players.
The rugby point is simpler. Dorian West, who coached him at Northampton, made the phone call, and the Sale pack needs him in round one. Those are the right conditions for a recall case, and nowhere to hide.
Borthwick has spent three years narrowing this squad
England are a team that has already learned how eleven wins in a season can end without a Six Nations title. They have a captain who has just come back from a rest, and a squad Borthwick has spent three years narrowing rather than widening.
Maro Itoje was left out of the summer Tests against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina after showing fatigue in the Six Nations, and he is back. “He is looking hungry,” the attack coach Lee Blackett said. “At first he thought it would be good for him. I don’t think he realised how good it would be for him.”
That is a coaching group with no second-row problem. Which is precisely the room Lawes has to walk into and take a shirt out of.
Henry Pollock’s next contract is being argued about in millions, and the pack around him keeps getting younger. The case for Lawes was never that he is better than what is there. It is that in the sixty-fifth minute of a one-score knockout Test in 2027, England will want somebody who has been in that minute a hundred and five times.
Wigglesworth’s answer says England are not ready to pay for that yet. A month of club rugby is what they have offered instead.
Read next: eleven wins in a season can still end without a Six Nations title. The squad Lawes is trying to break into was built out of that season, which is exactly why it is closed.
Frequently asked
Is Courtney Lawes eligible for England again?
Yes. He was ineligible while playing for Brive under England’s policy of selecting only from home-based clubs. Signing a one-year deal at Sale for 2026/27 made him selectable, and he has said he has come out of international retirement.
Why is Jack Willis still not eligible?
Because he plays for Toulouse. The policy is about where a player is contracted, not how well he is playing.
How many England caps does Courtney Lawes have?
105, plus five for the British and Irish Lions.
When is the England autumn squad named?
Late October, which gives Lawes and Marchant roughly five rounds of club rugby to make the case.
Your turn
So which is it. Is a 37-year-old lock with 105 caps a genuine autumn selection, or a nice story that England’s coaches have politely declined twice in one answer?
Pick one in the comments, and name the player you would drop to fit him in, because that was the actual question Wigglesworth asked.
Still to come this week: whether Borthwick’s second row is as settled as Blackett made it sound.
