Six Nations LIVE: England, Wales and Scotland name teams for openers

Recently-appointed co-captain Rory Darge has not recovered from a knee injury in time to feature so Finn Russell will lead the side.

Previous skipper Jamie Ritchie, who lost the role last month, has been named in the back-row alongside Matt Fagerson and Luke Crosbie, while Ben White has got the nod to start at scrum-half ahead of Ali Price.

Props Elliot Millar-Mills and Alex Hepburn are both in line to make their debuts off the bench, with Jack Dempsey, the number eight at the World Cup, also named among the subs.

Glasgow’s Kyle Rowe – whose only previous cap came as a substitute against Argentina in July 2022 – will make his first start for Scotland at full-back in Saturday’s Guinness Six Nations opener away to Wales after Toulouse’s Blair Kinghorn was ruled out of the first two matches of the championship with a knee injury.

George Ford has been selected to start at fly half for England in their Six Nations opener against Italy in Rome on Saturday, in a starting XV that also includes a pair of uncapped players – Ethan Roots and Fraser Dingwall.

Owen Farrell’s decision to step away from international rugby opened the door at No 10 to a slew of candidates and Marcus Smith appeared to be the favourite to get first crack at the jersey, only to suffer an injury in training earlier this week.

That left a head-to-head shootout between 91-cap Ford – who has only recently returned to action from an injury of his own and is struggling for form at Sale Sharks – and uncapped Northampton Saints star Fin Smith. Head coach Steve Borthwick has opted for the experience of Ford from the start, with Smith on the bench and in line to finish out the clash at the Stadio Olimpico.

15. Freddie Steward (Leicester Tigers, 31 caps)

14. Tommy Freeman (Northampton Saints, 3 caps)

13. Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs, 57 caps)

12. Fraser Dingwall (Northampton Saints, uncapped)

11. Elliot Daly (Saracens, 64 caps)

10. George Ford (Sale Sharks, 91 caps) – vice captain

9. Alex Mitchell (Northampton Saints, 11 caps)

1. Joe Marler (Harlequins, 88 caps)

2. Jamie George (Saracens, 85 caps) – captain

3. Will Stuart (Bath Rugby, 33 caps)

4. Maro Itoje (Saracens, 76 caps) – vice captain

5. Ollie Chessum (Leicester Tigers, 18 caps)

6. Ethan Roots (Exeter Chiefs, uncapped)

7. Sam Underhill (Bath Rugby, 30 caps)

8. Ben Earl (Saracens, 25 caps)

16. Theo Dan (Saracens, 7 caps)

17. Ellis Genge (Bristol Bears, 58 caps) – vice captain

18. Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers, 107 caps)

19. Alex Coles (Northampton Saints, 3 caps)

20. Chandler Cunningham-South (Harlequins, uncapped)

21. Danny Care (Harlequins, 96 caps)

22. Fin Smith (Northampton Saints, uncapped)

23. Immanuel Feyi-Waboso (Exeter Chiefs, uncapped)

World Rugby has revealed legal action is being taken after match officials and players suffered online abuse during the 2023 World Cup.

One individual in Australia has been charged for online abuse, cases in other jurisdictions are pending – including France, New Zealand the UK – and 1,600 social media accounts have been reported to platforms for breach of their community guidelines.

England’s Wayne Barnes announced his retirement five days after refereeing the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand, with his wife Polly revealing that he had received death threats while at the tournament in France and had suffered such abuse many times.

The referees for the 2024 Six Nations have been confirmed with the world’s top officials set to take charge again in the annual championship.

Two of rugby’s most experienced officials have stepped away since the conclusion of the World Cup in the autumn, with England’s Wayne Barnes retiring at the end of the tournament and Jaco Peyper of South Africa hanging up his whistle after an Achilles injury.

That leaves opportunities for three debutants in the tournament, with England’s Christophe Ridley and France’s Pierre Brousset joined by Andrea Piardi, who is set to become the first Italian to referee a men’s Six Nations match.

Here’s the full officiating line-up for the championship:

Ellis Genge has opened up on his struggles with impostor syndrome, revealing that he has sometimes questioned his own place in the England team.

“I’ve been [playing for England] for a while now,” Genge says in episode two of the Netflix series. “But I always feel like I need to prove myself. I’ve struggled with it my whole life.

Steve Borthwick and the England squad are making the short hop across from Catalonia to the Italian capital this afternoon having spent the last ten days or so in Girona, enjoying the first-rate facility that the La Liga leaders have just opened as they bid to hit the ground running in this Six Nations campaign. Balancing time on and time off has been key at the warm-weather camp, with a PGA Tour-quality golf course understood to have been well received by those who brought their clubs. But the primary focus has been on the hard toil to get England ready for their opener:

The 2023 Rugby World Cup held in France had a 19 per cent viewership growth from the 2019 edition, becoming the most viewed rugby event of all time, World Rugby have said.

The event, held in September and October, clocked in 1.33bn viewing hours across linear and non-linear broadcast, a 30 per cent growth from the last World Cup held in Europe in 2015 in England.

Steve Borthwick insists England’s battle-hardened players are ready for the Guinness Six Nations as a result of facing greater club demands than any of their rivals.

Borthwick’s 36-man squad have comfortably racked up the highest number of minutes played since the World Cup due to their Gallagher Premiership and European commitments.

But while they will enter the Six Nations depleted by a greater workload – they have accumulated over two hours of game time more per player than next highest France – Borthwick believes they have benefited from the competitiveness of English clubs.

Six Premiership teams have reached the knockout phase of the Investec Champions Cup while the domestic league itself is more compelling that ever following its reduction in teams.

“The players are match-hardened, so that’s a great benefit. Generally I will try to look at the positive side and I have a group of players that are match-hardened. They are ready to go,” Borthwick said.

“The other thing is the nature of the Premiership. All of the games are counting so the leverage of all these games is huge.

“And there have been teams fighting in Europe to get qualification, fighting to find a way to win which, again, is a real positive.

“Everything we’re getting is saying all the clubs are running more than they were 12 months ago, so that’s a real positive.”