Eddie Jones asks Steve Borthwick to join his England revolution

Bristol are likely to drive a very hard bargain on the compensation front, having contracted Borthwick only a few weeks ago

Steve Borthwick worked with Eddie Jones and Japan at the World Cup (Getty)

Eddie Jones is arriving at Twickenham on Tuesday to begin a four-year stint as England’s first overseas head coach, but there has already been some feverish activity behind the scenes with the Rugby Football Union making a formal approach to Bristol for the release of Steve Borthwick – a former red-rose captain identified by the new boss as a key member of his reshaped back-room staff.

Neither the governing body nor the West Country club would comment on the move, but it is understood that discussions are now in progress. Bristol are likely to drive a very hard bargain on the compensation front, having contracted Borthwick only a few weeks ago, but if agreement can be reached, the ex-Bath and Saracens second-rower will be on the RFU payroll in time for the 2016 Six Nations, which begins in early February.

After calling it a day on the playing front in May of last year, Borthwick joined Jones in Japan as the first step in a full-time coaching career. His work with the Asian champions’ forward pack quickly bore fruit – World Cup victories over Samoa, the United States and, jaw-droppingly, South Africa provided ample evidence of his aptitude for the job – and when Jones was headhunted for the England role earlier this month, most rugby insiders put two and two together.

An acknowledged master of the line-out arts and an outstanding analyst, Borthwick was a far better lock – and an infinitely better captain – than his muddle-headed critics made out. Those critics are unlikely to make the same mistake when judging him as a coach. Last week, the Bristol rugby director Andy Robinson, who signed Borthwick as an 18-year-old player and recruited him all over again just recently, described him as “a quality man who understands the attacking game, the defensive game and is a phenomenal leader”.

Jones has an in-tray the size of a house, but there are certain pressing priorities. Apart from piecing together his support staff, he must name an elite squad of between 33 and 35 players in the second week of January.

Eddie Jones, the new England Rugby head coach, posing at Twickenham Stadium (Getty)

The Australian will not have a completely free hand: under the terms of the existing agreement between the governing body and the top-flight clubs, the 31-man World Cup party named by Jones’ predecessor, Stuart Lancaster, forms the basis for the Six Nations squad. Strictly speaking, Jones can make only 10 changes.

In reality, he has slightly more wriggle room owing to the abrupt departure from the union game of the cross-coder Sam Burgess, who is now back in Sydney playing a form of rugby he understands. But there will still be a few heavy fallers if Jones, a ruthless selector, promotes some of England’s most eye-catching uncapped talent at the start of another World Cup cycle.

If the last global tournament gave the RFU precious few reasons to be cheerful – England were the first host nation in World Cup history to fall short of the knock-out stage – the top brass can at least find comfort in the annual accounts, which show record revenues of more than £200m and investment levels above and beyond anything previously recorded.

Ian Ritchie, the governing body’s chief executive, described the 2014-15 business year as “busy and financially successful”, making a neat distinction between more recent events on the field, which were busy and painfully unsuccessful. He reported that the Twickenham upgrade project had been completed on time and on budget and that there had been a retained profit of £7.7m, even though almost £77m had been pumped into the English game – a rise of 2 per cent on the previous year.

Meanwhile, the Wales and Lions Test centre Jamie Roberts will play for Cambridge University in the forthcoming Varsity Match, which takes place at Twickenham in nine days’ time. The 29-year-old midfielder will be the first active international to appear in the showpiece event since the Wallaby lock Dan Vickerman six years ago.

“It will be a unique experience for me,” said Roberts, a qualified doctor who is studying for a masters degree in medical science at Queens’ College. “It’s a different group of players, a different standard and a different prize, but it’s still a very important rugby match.”