Elliot Daly of Wasps is set to make an unexpected first start for England on Saturday against South Africa at Twickenham in place of the regular outside centre Jonathan Joseph.
The Bath player has had a firm grip on the number 13 jersey since head coach Eddie Jones took charge but the 24-year-old Daly is now earmarked to partner Owen Farrell in midfield.
Speedy and elusive, Daly, who has won five previous caps from the bench, can also kick long-range goals if required. He was a good enough cricketer to have represented England Under-15 but has had to wait patiently for a Twickenham starting chance despite his outstanding form for Wasps over the past year.
Joseph has been nursing a slight groin strain which may have played some part in Jones’s thinking.
It increases to six the number of changes to the starting line-up from England's last outing against Australia in Sydney in June. Maro Itoje, George Kruis, James Haskell, Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell have already been sidelined through injury, offering opportunities to Courtney Lawes, Joe Launchbury, Tom Wood, Marland Yarde and Jonny May.
Potential Test debuts
There will also be potential Test debuts from the bench for the Harlequins prop Kyle Sinckler, the Wasps backrower Nathan Hughes and Worcester’s Ben Te’o, with Sale’s Josh Beaumont also in the frame should Jones decide on a 6-2 split between replacement forwards and backs when he confirms his plans on Thursday.
The snap reaction to England's squad announcement on Tuesday has been swift and scathing. In Bath the general view was omitting their wing Semesa Rokoduguni was even crazier than the US election result.
“Roko released by England is ridiculous”, tweeted the club’s experienced forward Matt Garvey. “The best winger in the Prem by a country mile. Baffling”.
His team-mate Matt Banahan felt likewise: “Guess two years of form, metres made, defenders beaten and tries scored means nothing”.
At Saracens they were similarly nonplussed by Jones’s decision to omit Alex Goode, the player of the year for last season’s double winners but yet to emerge as an obvious Jones favourite. Recent form in the Premiership has rarely felt more irrelevant to back-three selection than it has this week for Saturday’s Test against South Africa.
Clearly Jones is the man in command and is entitled to do what he likes. Nine successive wins suggest England’s coach has a reasonably sure touch. But with his regular wings Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell out injured, these are defining weeks for players such as Rokoduguni. If he cannot get in now, on the back of scoring 15 tries in his past 15 Premiership games, what are his chances when Watson and Nowell are available again?
It also forms part of a wider debate about what, exactly, England are looking to achieve out wide. The statistics are interesting. Rokoduguni, who won his solitary Test cap against New Zealand under Stuart Lancaster, has scored 17 tries in his past 27 Premiership games over the past year and a bit.
Suspended
Over the same 15-month period, Wasps' Christian Wade has scored 16 and the suspended Chris Ashton has 11. Marland Yarde and the fit-again Jonny May, the two wings set to start against South Africa, have scored four and zero respectively.
This is not to dump on Yarde or May, both of whom contribute in assorted areas and tend to pop up infield more often than Rokoduguni or Wade. Memories of May’s electric try against the All Blacks in that same 2014 Test at Twickenham also remain gloriously fresh. But how is Yarde, a player whose solitary try in six Premiership games this autumn came against Bristol on the opening day of the season, rated ahead of the 29-year-old Rokoduguni?
Yes, the Harlequin played and scored in the first Test against Australia in June and has long had the potential to be a top-level operator. That said, one half-decent European pool game against a pitiful Stade Français at The Stoop, in which he also endured some wobbly defensive moments, hardly demands Yarde’s retention above his Fiji-born rival.
The truth can only be down to one of three things – or two if we ignore the fanciful theory that, in Nowell’s absence, Jones craves at least one striking hairdo on the wing.
Yarde has either been tearing it up spectacularly in training or the management have taken against anyone who appears to be even slightly understated. Neither Rokoduguni nor Goode are natural on-field ranters but, underneath, are as quietly competitive as anyone. – (Guardian Service)
England XV v South Africa (probable)
Mike Brown (Harlequins); Marland Yarde (Harlequins), Elliot Daly (Wasps), Owen Farrell (Saracens), Jonny May (Gloucester); George Ford (Bath), Ben Youngs (Leicester); Mako Vunipola (Saracens), Dylan Hartley (Northampton, capt), Dan Cole (Leicester), Joe Launchbury (Wasps), Courtney Lawes (Northampton), Chris Robshaw (Harlequins), Tom Wood (Northampton), Billy Vunipola (Saracens).
