Front-row play, Graham Rowntree said yesterday, is a smart man’s game, a powerful man’s game. The scrum coach will hope, therefore, that Tim Payne lives up to that description after England, reluctantly, acknowledged that the London Wasps loose-head prop will start against South Africa at Twickenham tomorrow because of the withdrawal of Andrew Sheridan.

This had been a possibility all week after Sheridan said on Tuesday that he had yet to recover fully from twisting his neck at a ruck during last weekend’s 28-14 defeat by Australia, during which England’s scrum suffered the indignity of being shunted backwards, twice. There is little point in obfuscation on these issues, yet England chose that path even while saying that Sheridan’s training regime this week has been “modified”.

Once Sheridan could play only a limited part in an earnest scrummaging session, the decision for Martin Johnson and his staff to make was whether Payne should go straight into the starting XV for his ninth cap ahead of Matt Stevens. The Bath man can play on both sides of the scrum — as can Phil Vickery — but it was decided to keep Stevens back as an impact player for later in the game.

Payne’s most recent start was in the second international with New Zealand in Christchurch in June, after Sheridan sustained a gash near his eye — from the boot of his own hooker, Lee Mears. Payne’s call-up brings the number of Wasps players in the XV to eight, despite the champions struggling to make an impact on the Guinness Premiership this season.

“We have had a good, hard look at ourselves as a front row,” Rowntree said. “Two of those scrums last week were embarrassing but it’s a collective effort, it’s not down to one individual. I would be disappointed if it happened again, but the statistics show there are fewer reset scrums against South Africa.”

Australia’s antics at scrums over the past few years have raised eyebrows throughout the game, although they are far more cohesive now. “We can only practise better processes, I won’t coach cynicism at set-pieces,” Rowntree said. “Sometimes mistakes are made in the process, sometimes people do switch off. If you dwell on it, the next job goes out of the window.”

South Africa will bring with them not only a combative scrum but also the best and most experienced lineout combination in the world, Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha. Nine times out of ten, an England lineout would be confident of being competitive against any rival, but they let a couple slip against Australia and, against these same opponents in last year’s World Cup final — in which there was a greater than usual number of lineouts — they proved vulnerable.

This is Steve Borthwick’s province and the England captain has not been short of critics this week, for both his leadership and his general play. Much of the criticism has failed to recognise the inexperience with which he is surrounded and Borthwick is phlegmatic enough to take it on the chin. “There’s a certain expectation that comes with the captaincy, I understand that,” he said. “I have full confidence in my ability as a rugby player and captain. If you accept that role, just as Martin Johnson accepts the role of team manager, you accept the responsibility that goes with it.

“Criticism goes with the job. What’s important is having a team of leaders — as we grow and develop, we earn more experience, different experience, and that’s the key. My job is to help England produce a better performance this weekend so that we move forward in both the short and long term.”

Borthwick, who partners Tom Palmer at lock, has not taken counsel with his director of rugby at Saracens, Eddie Jones, who was part of South Africa’s management team at the World Cup, concentrating as he is on the building blocks being put in place by the reconstituted England coaching team.

Borthwick’s emphasis is on the collective rather than the individual units in the England squad. “We as a second-row partnership, we as an eight, have to complement each other,” he said. “It was clear last week that at times we did some outstanding things, but at times the precision wasn’t there and when that happened, Australia punished us.”

That is inevitable with a side still seeking their own character, their own identity, not all of which depends on a traditional English power base up front. “We don’t want to be predictable, we want to challenge opposition defences and that won’t happen overnight,” Brian Smith, the attack coach, said.

If, though, there remain doubts over England’s foundations, then the Springboks, with their confrontational play, will find them out.