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England play Generation Game against All Blacks with overhaul of traditional order of selection

Steve Borthwick has picked six British & Irish Lions on his bench with a further nod to the growing importance of the endgame

Selecting your best XV to start a big rugby match feels increasingly quaint these days, as redolent of a different era as the Generation Game or Starsky & Hutch. To the point where you half expect to find the home team sheet to face New Zealand this weekend has D-N-A-L-G-N-E printed at the top of it. Even with the All Blacks in town, the traditional order of selection no longer applies.

Instead it is all about the endgame. On this occasion Steve Borthwick has picked six British & Irish Lions on his bench compared with only four in his starting lineup. At some point around the 50th minute on Saturday there will be a mass discarding of XXL tracksuits and a whole fresh set of white orcs will rumble on. As South Africa’s “Bomb Squad” have long since shown, it can be mighty hard to combat.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/cviXLWe
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