England Head Coach - Stuart Lancaster has named his team to face France this coming weekend. TOM WOOD will captain England in Saturday’s QBE International against France at Twickenham Stadium (8pm, live on Sky Sports HD).
Tom Wood - Captain
RWC2015
First of three warm up matches!
England v France
QBE International
Saturday 15th August - Twickenham the Home of Rugby
Kick Off 2000 (local time)
A number of things have happened in the last few weeks, which make England's 'Pool of Death' featuring Fiji, England, Australia, Wales and Uruguay much more interesting and a bit jittery to say the least.
First we have the Fijians playing superb rugby and winning the Pacific Nations Cup. Then we have the Australians trashing the 'All Blacks' 27-19 claiming their first ever 'Rugby Championship ' and then Ireland go and move to second place in the World Rugby rankings for the very first time after beating Wales 35-21 at the Millennium Stadium no less!!!
Questions what is going on? Well my answer to that would be a bit of pre RWC nerves and maybe a bit of Wales and the All Blacks thinking they are invincible.
Moving onto England............ well of course we are playing the French twice, first match up this weekend. Another question will the French turn up as they did in the last six nations and give England a great match? or will it be the other French side? It is such a shame the French are labelled in this way but they are, you just can't predict if they want to play or not.
As for England well it has been a bit quiet of late on the western front. We do know they had two hard weeks of training in Denver but have we really had any nuggets of gossip? No is the answer to that one.
Seven players were cut last week from the world cup training squad, wingers Chris Ashton, Marland Yarde and Semesa Rokoduguni along with centre Kyle Eastmond, scrum-half Lee Dickson, flanker Matt Kvesic and prop Matt Mullan. However, Lancaster has stressed the door is not closed to them.
Head Coach Stuart Lancaster said: “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. “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. “I’m delighted for the new caps and for Ben Morgan, who has worked so hard to get back to fitness following his injury.”
England team to face France England XV: 15-Alex Goode, 14-Anthony Watson, 13-Henry Slade, 12- Sam Burgess, 11-Jonny May, 10- Owen Farrell, 9- Richard Wigglesworth; 1-Mako Vunipola, 2- Rob Webber, 3- Kieran Brookes, 4- George Kruis, 5-Geoff Parling, 6-Tom Wood, 7-Calum Clark, 8- Ben Morgan Replacements: 16-Luke Cowan-Dickie, 17-Alex Corbisiero, 18-David Wilson, 19-Dave Attwood, 20- James Haskell, 21- Danny Care, 22-Danny Cipriani, 23-Billy Twelvetrees
France 25-man squad to face England
Forwards (14): Uini Atonio, Xavier Chiocci, Vincent Debaty, Nicolas Mas, Rabah Slimani, Guilhem Guirado, Dimitri Szarzewski, Alexandre Flanquart, Yoann Maestri, Sebastien Vahaamahina, Yannick Nyanga, Fulgence Ouedraogo, Loann Goujon, Louis Picamoles
Backs (11): Rory Kockott, Morgan Parra, Remi Tales, Francois Trinh-Duc, Alexandre Dumoulin, Gael Fickou, Remi Lamerat, Brice Dulin, Sofiane Guitoune, Yoann Huget, Scott Spedding
