England very lucky with World Cup draw, how we fought criticism in 2023, and my end-of-year awards - Danny Care Column

Ex-England scrum-half Danny Care has been providing his insight and analysis for TNT Sports throughout the 2025 Quilter Nations Series. Here is his final column of the autumn in which he reacts to England's World Cup draw, reflects on his memories of the last World Cup, and hands out his end-of-year awards. Watch the Gallagher PREM season live on TNT Sports and discovery+.

If you’re an England fan, the 2027 World Cup draw is as good as it can be. The group contains our old special friends in World Cups, Wales, and the Tonga game will be tough as well, but you’d expect England to walk that group. Without being overconfident, they should be winning every single game comfortably to finish top of that pool.

Then they should hopefully get through against Italy, you’d imagine in the next round, which sets up a clash with the old enemy in Australia, which will be massive. Australia have got such pedigree at the tournament that it’s going to be a proper, proper clash.

That’s me with my positive, confident hat on, thinking that would be England’s route. I think if you’re an England fan, wow, we’ve been very lucky to be on the other side of the draw to France, New Zealand and South Africa. The draw has really gone in England’s favour again, as it did in 2023 a little bit, when we met South Africa in the semi-finals.

If you can potentially get to a semi-final without playing France, New Zealand or South Africa, you have to consider yourself incredibly lucky, and what an opportunity the boys have got to go one or two steps further than we did in 2023. It’s really exciting.

Obviously with Wales, there are still some scars from that 2015 World Cup pool game, but I think if you look at the difference in the teams now, it’s a whole generation different. That Wales generation was incredible. The problems and the mess that they’re in, we saw what South Africa did to them last weekend. You hope that Wales will get better with another year and a half under their belt, but it’s a long way for them to climb, it’s a long stretch to say that Wales would have a chance of beating England in that game on current form.

Having said that, 18 months to go, in a World Cup, special things can happen. But I’m very happy with the draw as an England fan. You can see us progressing quite nicely at least to the quarter-finals, and then anything can happen from there.

A massive thing you have to get right before you get to the World Cup is combinations – it’s huge. The next 18 months will be massive to work out not only what is England’s best 15, but their best 23. We’ve seen the 23, this whole squad, make such a big impact in international rugby recently.

Who are England’s best starters? Who are England’s best finishers? They’ve got to really hone in on that gameplan, develop those connections. And then I think relationships are massive, off the field stuff that then translates onto the field. I truly believe the most connected teams, the best culture and environment that teams go into the World Cup with - normally that team wins the World Cup.

I don’t think anyone could argue in the last eight years that South Africa, from the outside, look like they are so connected. They’re all on the same goal, the same path. They know who they’re playing for, what they’re playing for, what they represent. I don’t think anyone’s embodying that more than what Rassie Erasmus is doing, with Siya Kolisi leading it. They’re the most connected team to their fan base, to themselves, to their country, to their team-mates, to the coaching staff, they all thoroughly believe in that.

That will be massive for England, to keep developing those relationships. England are in an absolutely brilliant spot, you couldn’t ask for more really, 10 wins on the bounce, what an incredible 2025 they’ve had. And they start again in 2026 and they want to build from that. I really feel like the most connected, together squad is absolutely huge for a World Cup.

It’s also the biggest length of time you’ll spend in camp with the lads and with the coaches. You’ll get so much time for people like attack coach Lee Blackett to drill into the detail that he wants. It’s really tough in Six Nations and Autumn Nations campaigns, where you’ll have only had a week with the team in preparation for that first game, whereas World Cups you get months together to work on stuff. I think that’s when you’ll see the real attributes of Lee and Richard Wigglesworth and all the coaches come together to see an even better England in 2027.

In terms of their focus over the 20 Tests between now and the World Cup, it sounds really simple, but just keep improving in every single aspect of the game. Don’t stand still – and I know they won’t, with the coaching staff they’ve got with Steve Borthwick driving that. They’re not a team that stands still, they’re a team that always looks forward and looks to get better and improve. In every aspect of the game, England can still get better – they can get way better – which is the exciting thing for an England team, and I’m sure the coaches are only really scratching the surface in terms of how good this team can be.

The 2023 World Cup was some of my favourite memories ever in an England shirt, and of playing rugby all together. We had a brilliant camp going into it, two months of proper graft, we worked extremely hard for it. We felt like we were in a really good place but it just wasn’t quite clicking on the pitch and obviously in those warm-up games that showed, and it showed on the biggest stage.

We started taking stick from everywhere – a lot of it was deserved because the stuff we were putting out there wasn’t like us. I’ll always remember Steve saying he was 100% confident that it was going to click, and he said it would click once we got to France.

I’ll never forget the first session in Le Touquet – obviously as a player you believe it but there was a bit of us that was like ‘we just haven’t shown it, what’s wrong’ – and it was one of the best training sessions I’ve ever been part of. Everything just clicked, it was almost a bit of a realisation moment in the camp, everything just started flowing nicely, maybe the stress and anxiety of not being at the World Cup until that point, injuries could still happen – and I was one of those heartbroken in 2011 to be named in the squad but not make the plane – so actually making the plane, touching down over there and then getting on the training park as 31 of us. You feel absolutely confident that you’re there and you know the job that’s at stake. Everything just came together really nicely on the training park that day, we all looked together, we all had a huddle at the end of the session, and we said ‘this is what this team is capable of, watch out everyone’.

Obviously Argentina came, Tom Curry got red-carded in the second minute. But that didn’t faze us, because we’d talked about something like that happening. Steve placed a massive emphasis on the leaders, we had a really strong leadership group, about 10 of us, a load of us old boys with a few young lads mixed in there. George Ford came into his own that game, found a way of ticking the scoreboard over and dominating, then obviously the drop-goal masterclass that followed. Going down to 14 and still beating a team like Argentina who always come good at the World Cup, just set us off on a great trajectory.

The pool stages we were then knocking off wins, and in the Samoa game I came off the bench and scored my first and only ever World Cup try, so that was an amazing moment. We set up a quarter-final against Fiji, everybody’s second favourite team, nobody wanted us to win that game. We had to ride a few storms, and then Courtney Lawes got a big turnover to win the game.

That was to set up that semi-final against South Africa, obviously we were heartbroken at the end, the boys played so well for 78 minutes. It was a little bit of poor game management, we went for a contestable kick on the halfway line rather than kicking it long. The scrum was really tough towards the end with the Bomb Squad coming on and ultimately Handre Pollard breaking our hearts. We genuinely thought it was our time, just unfortunately we weren’t quite good enough at the end of the day, which will always live with us.

But we can be really proud of what happened in 2023, from where the team was the year before, to where it got to, to nearly beating the world champions – we were beating them for 78 minutes. It just set the team on a great trajectory now hopefully for 2027.

It’s hard to see any England bolters for the coming 18 months, because you can’t really justify putting in any brand new lads when the team’s doing so well. There will always be tweaks and one or two opportunities due to injury or someone playing so well for their club. Potentially someone like Henry Arundell, playing so well for Bath, could he get back and fight for a starting shirt? Noah Caluori, we’ve seen glimpses of him in camp, he’s got the aerial game that is so in vogue in the international game at the moment, there might be a spot for him in that World Cup squad if he can keep developing, because he could really be one of the best in the business.

But at the moment, if you’ve got Tom Roebuck and Manny Feyi-Waboso on the wing, it’s really tough to make an argument to drop either of those. Then you’ve got Tommy Freeman as well, who’s played in the centres but is primarily a winger. I don’t think there will be any bolters for the Six Nations, but potentially for the World Cup you might see one or two.

My prediction for next year's Six Nations is a shoot-out between England and France. I still would have France as favourites because England have got to go to France, but I don’t think there’s an awful lot between them at the moment.

I think the Antoine Dupont factor could be huge for France; that could just rejuvenate them. We’ve seen glimpses of them being amazing but also conceding a lot of points. So it’s between those two for me, with Ireland in third, and then Scotland, Italy and Wales for the wooden spoon.

1. France
2. England
3. Ireland
4. Scotland
5. Italy
6. Wales

And finally, these are my end-of-year awards:

Best player: Pieter-Steph du Toit

Best England player: Ben Earl

Best game: France v South Africa, Quilter Nations Series 2025

Best try: James Dun for Bristol v Bath (Gallagher PREM 24/25 semi-final) - watch below

Best moment: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu's 37-point performance v Argentina

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