​Watching a heated East Midlands derby at Mattioli Woods Welford Road on Saturday, Steve Borthwick could not help cracking a smile. The half-time whistle had blown and yet the players of Leicester and Northampton were in no hurry to head down the tunnel, handbags out as they traded barbs and barges in a semi-scuffle that threatened to become something more. To their head coach’s delight, it was a host of England internationals at the heart of it: Alex Mitchell the instigator; Freddie Steward an escalator; Henry Pollock a natural fit as the pantomime villain; Ollie Chessum (literally) chasing him off stage. Sprinkle in walk-on cameos from Alex Coles, Joe Heyes, Jack van Poortvliet and the rest, and one would have found a fair portion of the 36-man squad named by Borthwick to intensify their preparations for the upcoming Nations Championship.Northampton and Leicester’s England stars were involved in a tussle in their derby clash (Getty)Clear the air talks, then? No need, Borthwick insisted. Those club rivalries may remain strong, but gone, largely, are the days of Prem tensions spilling into England camps. Indeed, plenty of the protagonists from Saturday’s skirmish holidayed together in Brazil following the summer tour; on Monday morning, they were back to being thick as thieves. “What I think is very good is that the players compete in the way they do one day and they can come in and be great mates the next day,” Borthwick explained. “I actually think it’s a real strength of the game to be able to compete like that in that kind of full-blooded encounter, as heated as that is, and then they’re perfectly fine. “As of tomorrow, everybody’s rivals again. It’s a strength of English rugby that the players have such pride in their clubs.”Club foes became England colleagues on Sunday (Getty)All good fun, in the end, but Borthwick had a serious point to make as he set the table for the 12 months ahead that will culminate in next year’s World Cup in Australia. “Do I like seeing intensity, passion, pride? Yes. Do I want the players to bring that passion and pride in an England shirt? Absolutely. These are young players that have grown up at their clubs and emerged as big players at their clubs. I want that in an England shirt. Sometimes it takes a little while in an England shirt, sometimes a number of years. “A large part of our team is very young: under 25, 26, that’s young for Test level. I want those players to come through and really own this team over the next period. We are within that year to the World Cup now, and I’ve talked to the players about that and the timescale we have.”Consider the starter’s gun fully fired, then, in the race for World Cup places. Borthwick is so often circumspect about looking far ahead – and was hoisted by his own petard to some extent having done so at the Six Nations – and therefore it was striking to hear him speak so openly about how he is plotting for the tournament. “We’ve got