England yesterday announced their side to face Italy in Saturday's World Cup Pool B opener but, naturally, it was the name Clive Woodward failed to include in his starting line-up which raised most eyebrows at Twickenham and at the Italian team hotel in Slough.
The news that Jeremy Guscott will launch his tournament on Saturday from the relative anonymity of the bench was softened only by Woodward's revelation that the Bath centre is suffering from a "slight groin injury" and will have a fitness test tomorrow. If he fails, Mike Catt will instead be among the replacements.
It turns out that Guscott has been carrying the injury since shortly after the warm-up game against Canada last month and yesterday's practice at Imber Court was his first full contact session for two weeks. The injury is apparently unrelated to the condition which kept him out of the game for a year. "Considering I've not been playing, I was always up against it," Guscott insisted yesterday.
Woodward has made a point of selecting only players who are 100 per cent fit but there have been signs in recent weeks that he was considering starting with Phil de Glanville and Will Greenwood as his first-choice centres in any case.
"England have always played well with De Glanville and Greenwood in the team together," said Woodward. Would he have made the same decision had the All Blacks been England's first opponents? "It's not the World Cup final on Saturday. It's the first game." It leaves England with only two starting players - Martin Johnson and Jason Leonard - with any active experience of the World Cup's knockout stages although De Glanville will chuckle at the irony of his selection now. In the 1995 World Cup this normally mild-mannered player berated his then England coach Jack Rowell for not picking him in the starting line-up when he believed his form merited it. Four years on, it is Guscott who must now start from the second row of the grid.
The other mildly contentious votes in the front row have gone to Leonard and Richard Cockerill with Martin Corry chosen to act as forward cover on the bench ahead of Tim Rodber, who was also involved in a full contact session for the first time in a couple of weeks yesterday. Austin Healey will act as the deputy scrum-half to Matt Dawson; if both happen to be injured De Glanville will take over at the base of the scrum.
Woodward is expecting a physical challenge from Italy, if nothing else. "You've got to disregard the other games they've had this year. It's the World Cup. They'll not lack for pride or motivation playing against England at Twickenham." What concerns him most, though, is England failing to live up to their potential. "The only fear I have is that we don't play in the way I know England can. I just hope we go in and do ourselves justice."
For Rodber, Catt, Leon Lloyd, Martyn Wood, Garath Archer, Joe Worsley, Neil McCarthy, and Victor Ubogu, the squad members not on duty, a waiting game is necessary.
Italy's coach Massimo Macioletti, who has delayed naming his side a further 48 hours, admitted his players are in awe of England. "Playing England at Twickenham will be a beautiful and fantastic experience," he said. "However, we have again been drawn in a group of iron. If the draw had been kinder we would have had a more legitimate chance of qualifying to the quarter-finals."
England (v Italy): Perry (Bath); Luger (Saracens), Greenwood (Leicester), De Glanville (Bath), Healy (Leicester); Wilkinson (Newcastle), Dawson (Northampton); Leonard (Harlequins), Cockerill (Leicester), Vickery (Gloucester), John- son (Leicester, capt), Grewcock (Saracens), Hill (Saracens), Back (Leicester), Dallaglio (Wasps). Replacements: Beal (Northampton), Guscott (Bath), Grayson (Northampton), Corry (Leicester), Rowntree (Leicester), Garforth (Leicester), Greening (Sale).
