SAM BURGESS WILL make his England debut in Saturday’s World Cup warm-up against France at Twickenham but Stuart Lancaster says this will be the last chance for some of his players to impress ahead of the tournament.
Lancaster had already admitted he would field a strong team in his sides’ first warm-up game while also utilising the fixture to take a closer look at some of those on the periphery ahead of settling on his final 31-man panel.
Henry Slade and Burgess will get the opportunity to force their way into the reckoning as they win their first caps while Northampton Saints’ Calum Clark gets the nod in the back-row.
Former Great Britain rugby league international Burgess started his union career in midfield with Bath and then switched to the back-row. He’ll wear number 12 on Saturday in a new look midfield partnership.
There is also plenty of experience in the squad with four British and Irish Lions as well as Tom Wood, who captains the side, and Alex Goode.
“We are really excited to play our first QBE International at Twickenham and to put into practice some what we have been working on for the last six weeks,” Lancaster said.
“The lads are itching to get out and play a match and these games give us a chance to look at a wide range of players and combinations before we narrow down our selection further.
“Tom is one of several leaders in the squad and he captained the team well in Argentina when Chris Robshaw was rested, so this is an ideal opportunity to take the armband at Twickenham against what will be a quality French team.
Tom Croft, Ben Foden and Chris Pennell are all still injured but due to return to training next week.
England play France home and away before facing Ireland at Twickenham on 5 September.
The hosts kick-off the tournament on Friday 18 September against Fiji.
“upset the natural flow of the game”. can’t agree with that. you have lads throwing themselves on the ground left, right and centre which is far more disruptive in my opinion, especially in the bigger knockout games when they’re a goal up. sure they had water breaks in some matches in the last World Cup which went by almost unnoticed. time for the video ref.
Also it should be easy enough to moderate the use of video techology. I.e limit the number of times it can be referred to in a game…. each coach can call for a video replay three times and no more!
About time but I would rather see it use for cheating and simulation
You can nearly tell by looking up that Barcaloni19 page on youtube that you would get 9/11 conspiracy clips in the suggested videos. Short memories, he seems to forget the second leg at Stamford Bridge only the year before.
All club have been stung over the years by bad decisions but when it’s costs a team a trophy/promotion or indeed regelation it can be hard to swallow .
If ever there was a club that benefited from extremely dubious refereeing, Barcelona is it.
The farce at Stamford Bridge
The Thiago Motta red card with Busquets peeking through his hands to see if he could stop rolling around yet
Van Persie’s second yellow for playing the ball after as the whistle was blown
And then from this tie, the Suarez non-red, the Iniesta non-red and the Torres sending off.
You lost all credibility when you said Torres was harshly sent off last week.
In that inter game the goal Barcelona got was actually offside so if they had video ref back then that goal wouldn’t have stood, and also the ridiculous motta red card would never have happened
They weren’t in the video so clearly didn’t happen.
3 for the manager is too many. Its been in hockey for a few years at the high level and only now is it really a very good system without issue of bias or unfair advantage. Currently, each team has one video refferral, which they keep if they are proven correct or in the case of “no decision possible”. When the team refers and they are mistaken, they lose the referral. Teams must refer immediately after the incident (within 3 seconds i think) and it has to be close to a goalscoring event (can’t be at midfield). It goes upstairs to a ref who avails of different camera replays. There are still instances when cameras don’t pick up the incident or it is unclear what happened although football games have so many cameras this might not be an issue. Also, there are still complaints to referees even after video referrals! In football there would be issues surrounding interpretation – handball/ball to hand for instance but these would simply have to be cleared up by rules committees. I think aswell that referees own referrals would be useful but in rugby these are taken too much in my opinion. The system works well, there is usually 3 or 4 refferals a game and they are swift and exciting. I think it would work. 6 a game would be hefty and would lead to a scenario whereby there would be a refferal by a winning defensive team over a free kick the last minute purely to waste time/stop momentum type of thing. This is not attractive to see.
Trust no one
Didn’t need last night to prove this. Just the last 30 years of diving, cheating, handballs etc etc etc