LONG READ Joe Heyes' coming of age has wiped out a key England weakness

Remember the concerns of what came next after Dan Cole? The national search for another scrum cornerstone with the same titanium spine? It was a thorny problem which exercised the mind of Steve Borthwick as he hung on as long as humanly possible to his old warhorse.

It is no longer an issue. The England tighthead void is officially filled.

Will Stuart has come of age in England colours this season to shove and shimmy his way into the Lions squad and over the past fortnight Joe Heyes has finally announced himself as a Test prop.

Having occupied the hazy buffer zone between club and Test player for longer than he would have cared for with the jury out on whether he would ever make the grade as an international or end up with the Premiership as his ceiling, the Leicester tighthead has made his move this summer.

If there was ever a tour for a prop to drive his stake into the ground it was Argentina – a country which prides itself on its scrum – and Heyes has done exactly that. The Pumas’ set-piece may not quite be the fearsome weapon of old but Heyes’ dominance in that area was eye-catching. Heyes, schooled at a renowned scrum university in Leicester under the tutelage of Professor Cole, punched all of his 126kg.

Heyes will never be another Tadhg Furlong as a ball carrier and distributor, but the stand-in scrum-half assist for Tom Roebuck’s second try in the first Test was a dextrous enough piece of work.

There is more on a prop’s to-do list than simply scrummaging but it doesn’t half help if you have a tighthead who can bolt the thing together and put the heat on the opposition. In Benetton’s Thomas Gallo, he had a strong adversary in the series but he played a blinder.

His work rate around the field was tremendous too. At the weekend in the second Test in San Juan, he topped the tackle count with 15. And he hit with ferocity too. He made sure he was noticed.

Heyes will never be another Tadhg Furlong as a ball carrier and distributor, but the stand-in scrum-half assist for Tom Roebuck’s second try in the first Test was a dextrous enough piece of work. He could not have done much more in the series to convince Borthwick the head coach now has two proper Test tightheads.

This is as it should be of course. England, a country whose rugby is built on its set-piece foundations, has always produced props. Think Phil Vickery, Julian White and Jason Leonard who was so good he could do an equally fine job on either side of the scrum.

However, Borthwick pinpointed tighthead a year ago after the series defeat to New Zealand as a position of concern. It never quite rang true that England had suddenly run out of No. 3s but attention was turning, somewhat desperately, to the next generation in the belief the cupboard might be bare.

Two of that generation, Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Afolabi Fasogbon, are on the tour to the Americas and one or both may play some part against the USA this weekend but at 20 and with only a handful of Premiership games between them, they are still learning the ropes as props. At 29 and 26 respectively, Stuart and Heyes are a more appropriate age profile for the here-and-now of the Test arena.

Stuart took a while to convince he was the answer but his past year, since a sobering New Zealand experience which led Borthwick to voice those tighthead concerns, has been outstanding.

Heyes went two years and three months between caps, a period during which frustration sometimes bordered on disillusionment.

He started every Test in the autumn and in the Six Nations and seemed to grow with each one. By the penultimate game of the championship against Italy he was even stepping opponents with syrupy in-and-out moves that left them in bewildered heaps. A Lions tour was just reward. All things being equal, he will become a Test Lion this weekend.

Heyes’ arrival as an England front row fixture has also been a slow-burner. Called into the national squad by Eddie Jones as far back as October 2020, he made his debut against the USA the following year but the period since had been one of trying, without conspicuous success, to convince England he was up to it.

He went two years and three months between caps, a period during which frustration sometimes bordered on disillusionment. It did not help his cause he was second choice at his club but if you are going to be second choice it might as well be to England’s most-capped forward. All the time he was patiently accumulating his minutes off the bench at Welford Road, Heyes was learning from the master.

Cole’s giant shadow finally began to move aside last season with Heyes preferred as starting tighthead by Michael Cheika. When Borthwick took a deep breath and at last discarded his bald safety blanket for the Six Nations, Heyes stepped up to become Stuart’s England back-up. His first international try came off the bench against Wales.

Elevated to starter for his country in Argentina, Heyes has more than met the challenge. Even the disruption of losing his hooker Jamie George ahead of kick-off at the weekend did not throw him off his stride. He did his job superbly.

It has been a terrific tour for England, building on an encouraging end to the Six Nations. The Pumas were right to start as favourites having overturned the Lions in Dublin but England did a number on them. They played smart, they played hard and they played well. The inevitable victory over the USA – who lost to Spain last weekend – in Washington will make it seven successive wins.

When the squad, bolstered by the returning Lions, reconvenes in the autumn, the strategic picture will be looking promisingly rosy. Reasons for optimism are abounding for Borthwick.

He has back row options coming out of his ears, he has found an exciting 12 in Seb Atkinson and he has a third-choice playmaker in George Ford that most other nations would take in a heartbeat.

The changed tighthead situation may well be the most reassuring of all to England’s head coach. In the course of a year, a position of weakness has become a position of strength.