Flanker Henry Pollock is poised to provide wing cover from the bench as Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, gambles on a radical six-two split against Australia on Sunday.

With Ben Curry starting at openside, in the absence of his injured twin brother Tom, alongside Ollie Chessum and Ben Earl in the back row, Pollock must settle for a place as a replacement. 

However, Telegraph Sport understands that the 21-year-old will be on standby to cover wings Tommy Freeman and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. They will be joined in the starting back three by full-back George Furbank, who will make his first Test start in almost exactly two years.

Meanwhile, loosehead prop Fin Baxter is set to start ahead of Ellis Genge despite playing just 96 minutes of rugby in the past 10 months because of a complicated foot injury. He will join hooker Jamie George and tighthead Joe Heyes in the front row. George Martin will also start in the second row alongside clubmate and captain Maro Itoje.

Borthwick will formally announce his team for the Nations Championship match on Friday afternoon, and it is still subject to change with fly-half Fin Smith needing to come through a training session on Friday morning as he recovers from a calf injury. However, the Northampton playmaker is pencilled in to start and will reprise his half-back partnership with Jack van Poortvliet from the summer’s Nations Championship matches. In a sign of further continuity from July’s matches, Seb Atkinson will partner Henry Slade in the centres.

Yet while Borthwick could have selected a versatile option such as Joe Marchant or Will Joseph, who are both equally comfortable on the wing as at centre, he will instead roll the dice on a six-two bench having reverted to a five-three split in the summer victories against Fiji and Argentina. Ben Spencer is the scrum-half cover while Marcus Smith can cover half-back and full-back, leaving Pollock as the primary replacement for the wings.

Borthwick has deployed back-rower Earl as a hybrid player at centre before and has previously raised the possibility of using Pollock in a similar fashion. “We’ve been looking at Henry Pollock on the wing,” Borthwick said last year. “His pace is a match for a lot of wingers. That kind of versatility is really important to us.”

Northampton team-mate Freeman also referenced Pollock’s ability to cover the wing and Borthwick will potentially put theory into practice against an Australian team loaded with dangerous strike runners, a particular risk given Feyi-Waboso’s chequered injury record.

Pollock will be joined on the bench by Exeter back-rower Greg Fisilau who is set to make his debut after Tom Curry suffered an injury in training on Wednesday, which is believed could rule him out of the rest of the Nations Championship. There is no place in the 23 for either Marchant or Joseph.