Steve Borthwick has "no doubt" that uncapped England stars will emerge on Argentina tour

For every player absent, there will be a player waiting in the wings who is eager to impress. The tour is expected to showcase some of the young talent that England has on offer, with 14 uncapped players already being selected in the training camp squad, which excludes Bath and Northampton Saints players due to their European finals.

Parallels were drawn by Borthwick to England’s previous tour to Argentina, which came in 2017 during the Lions tour to New Zealand.

He said, “I think that the example you'd use would be 2017, the players emerged in 2017 on that series against Argentina, and really staked their claim then two years out from the World Cup and then became really important influential players for England at the 2019 World Cup and played really well in that World Cup.”

England reached the 2019 World Cup final, being defeated by the Springboks at the final hurdle.

This year, there is a real opportunity for players to really put their name in the hat for Test minutes in the future. Borthwick spoke on how he foresees this tour to impact the future and potential World Cup selection in 2017,

“I have no doubt that there's going to be some players emerge here, this summer, who’ll stake their claim and really say, ‘this is I want to part of that team in 2027.’ And I'm looking forward to that,” he said. “The enthusiasm, the energy, the excitement they bring, the way they attacked this afternoon, was really, really impressive.”

Rugby is heavily based on current form, so impressing in the Americas this year might give the head coach some serious food for thought regarding the players that he might trust going forward.

Out-of-form centre Henry Slade is in this training camp and is likely to go to Argentina, but Rekeiti Ma’asi White and Seb Atkinson are two uncapped players who have also been selected to train.

If either of them is able to show that they are better than Slade in the same environment, then they might be able to nail down a spot in squads to come.

This summer also provides a chance for Borthwick to work out what his pecking order is beyond the squad players. Some young players may not earn themselves a permanent spot in future squads from this tour, but could establish their name as being the next one up if an injury was to happen.

The England boss gave the fly-half position of an example that he is potentially going this for, saying, “We’ve got three brilliant fly-half’s in Fin (Smith), Marcus (Smith) and George (Ford) and two of them currently selected on that Lions tour, and so clearly we are looking for who the next one is.”

Uncapped Gloucester fly-half Charlie Atkinson is in this squad, with Bath’s Ciaran Donoghue missing out for now, due to his involvement in this weekend's Challenge Cup final against Lyon.

Those two appear to be the fourth and fifth choices at the minute, which Borthwick all but confirmed, “Charlie Atkinson's been here. He's been in a number of squads, he’s been training programmes, and I think Ciaran Donoghue’s also one of those players (who could be next in line).”

An England XV will face a France XV at Twickenham as a game to prep for the tour, with Borthwick seeing it as an important step in deciding who he could potentially pick.

He spoke about the game as a whole as well as the importance of the two European finals between Premiership and Top 14 teams this weekend, “It'd be an important step for us and we know France will be have some clubs unavailable, some players unavailable for section as clearly we do, but we also know the depth that they have in their country and in their squad.

“We spoke about this prior to the Six Nations, some of the clubs had some tough games as we went into that France game, we had some tough games against French opponents, and I think the French went in with a lot of confidence against us. So hopefully this weekend, we'll see English clubs do really well and hopefully we can continue that when we put on our stadium.”