ENGLAND FLANKER Lewis Moody will miss this season’s entire Six Nations Championship after suffering a broken ankle in training on Thursday. Moody has undergone surgery and faces up to three months on the sidelines.
It is the latest setback in the 30-year-old Leicester flanker’s injury-hit career, and means he is battling to regain full fitness in time to make a selection case for the Lions tour of South Africa later this year.
A decision on Moody’s replacement in the England elite player squad will be made following this weekend’s final round of Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup pool games.
The squad heads to Portugal for warm-weather training on Sunday, with Bath captain Michael Lipman and London Irish prospect Steffon Armitage heading the list of candidates available to England manager Martin Johnson.
Moody’s absence is yet another blow for Johnson, who will be without Wasps flanker Tom Rees at least for the first three Six Nations games, while secondrow forward Tom Palmer will miss the whole tournament because of shoulder trouble.
The Bath and England prop Matt Stevens will almost certainly receive a two-year ban after admitting he had tested positive for a recreational drug and European Rugby Cup Ltd decided World Anti-Doping Agency provisions that came into force on January 1st would not apply in his case.
Stevens was tested on December 14th following a Heineken Cup match in Glasgow and the drug is believed to be cocaine.
While the new provisions distinguish between performance-enhancing drugs and recreational substances, the old ones allow for a ban of less than two years after a positive test for any banned drug only if the person concerned can demonstrate no guilt or no significant guilt, such as having taken the drug unwittingly.
As Stevens admitted he had been hooked on a recreational drug for some time, the ERC disciplinary panel will have no option but to suspend him for two years, which means he will not be able to play again until January 2011.
