England have sights fixed on winning the Rugby World Cup despite their worst-ever Six Nations campaign still being fresh in the memory.

Steve Borthwick’s team return to action on Sunday when they host Australia in the Nations Championship at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham.

They have lost five of their last eight games, including four in a Six Nations for the first time in 50 years. Their disciplinary record, if anything, is even worse.

‘There’s no reason not to aim for that trophy’

Yet according to Charlie Atkinson, the Gloucester fly-half called into camp last week who will play for England ‘A’ against Argentina in Bath on Friday evening, the 2003 winners have eyes firmly on the prize.

“The feeling is that we’re aiming for the gold medal,” he says. “We’ve got a very talented and competitive squad. There’s no reason not to aim for that trophy.”

England, the only northern hemisphere side ever to win the men’s World Cup, have a highly favourable draw: pooled with Tonga, Zimbabwe and Wales, ranked 19th, 25th and 10th respectively in the global order.

Barring disaster, they will avoid any of the world’s top seven nations before the quarter-final and cannot meet the leading two, South Africa and New Zealand, before the final.

With hammerings from Scotland, Ireland and the Springboks in their last seven outings, however, they need to walk before they can run.

Which brings us to this weekend and the first of three matches in the northern leg of a Nations Championship divided into two leagues, one for the Northern Hemisphere, one for the Southern.

France lead the northern conference by two points so England know they have no room for error in games against Australia, Japan and New Zealand if they are to take top spot and, with it, a place in the November 29 final.

With 331 days until the World Cup kicks off Down Under, and just 10 Tests before Borthwick names his tournament squad, the stakes are high. Competition for places has rarely been greater.

You can see it on the training field in Bagshot, where England are preparing for Sunday’s Test, and in the Bath hotel where Mark Mapletoft strode into a meeting room last Sunday and wrote two dates on a whiteboard.

The first was 1 November 2026, the day his England A squad assembled to prepare to face its Puma counterpart at the Recreation Ground this Friday. The second was 2 October 2027.

“That one is England’s first pool match in the World Cup,” Atkinson, 25, explains. “Against Tonga, in Brisbane.”

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As the Rugby Football Union’s head of men’s pathway, Mapletoft is charged with looking after England’s tomorrow. While Borthwick deals with the here and now, the former Red Rose fly-half is preparing the next in line.

Given how the senior team has under-delivered in 2026, opportunity might knock sooner rather than later.

“With those two dates I think Tofty was reminding of us that,” says Atkinson, who has been red-hot for Gloucester this term and is pushing hard to break up the Fin Smith, George Ford, Marcus Smith fly-half triopoly.

“His point was to show that we are not a million miles off, and he gave examples of boys that have played for the A side and, in some cases, within a week been promoted to play for the full team.

“His message was that if we carry on performing for our club sides and this team, you never know. You might be called up. It’s about grabbing that chance with both hands.”

Atkinson is one of eight capped players in the squad to face Argentina, alongside Noah Caluori, Max Ojomoh, Ethan Roots, Luke Northmore, Jamie Blamire, George Kloska and Joe Carpenter.

In and out of the senior group since 2021, he made his Test debut off the bench in Washington DC last summer. England won easily enough, 40-5, but the match took more than three and a half hours to complete due to three lightning delays.

“We were scheduled to start at 10.05pm UK time and I don’t think I got on until after 1am,” he said. “By the third lightning stoppage we were walking back to the changing rooms and I was half laughing, thinking, ‘it’s just not meant to be. I’m not going to get my cap’.”

Atkinson has come a long way since starting a European Challenge Cup semi-final for Wasps at the age of 20, making England’s shadow Six Nations squad soon after and being made redundant three days after his 21st birthday when Wasps went bust.

No longer is he thought of as the 18-year-old victim of Owen Farrell’s first red card in 2020. His experience at Wasps, through Leicester and onto Kingsholm, has made him one of the country’s most sought-after players.

“This is the first time I’ve been genuinely gutted not to be in a senior England squad,” he says. “The first time in my career I’ve felt, maybe, I could have a little look-in there.

“It is the first time since I was at Wasps that I’m getting consistent game time. The first time I really feel I’m performing: putting out consistent and good displays for Gloucester.”

After Wasps’ demise, Borthwick took Atkinson to Leicester. But when England came calling for Tigers’ Premiership-winning director of rugby, his young half-back struggled.

“I was still a bit young,” he explains. “And I didn’t really realise that, as a 10, if you want to be leading a team, you have to be using your voice off the pitch a bit more.

“I had a few tough love conversations at Tigers with Richard Wigglesworth and Matt Everard which kind of flipped a switch in my head that I’ve got to go and grab it myself.

“Then last summer, on tour with England in Argentina and the US, [George] Fordy helped me a lot to find my voice, which really benefited me going back to Gloucester.”

The upshot is that Ford now has Atkinson firmly in his rear view mirrors, fast gaining ground. That suits Borthwick just fine.

Such competition is what England needs in every position if reality is to match their stated ambition in the coming year.