If only the World Cup was another year away, it would all seem so simple. The trickle of young bloods coming into Stuart Lancaster’s England squad is starting to become a steady flow. The issue for the head coach is whether they have arrived too late.
Henry Slade, who was the starting fly half in England’s Junior World Championship victory two years ago, was called back into the squad yesterday as injury cover for Brad Barritt, where he will join Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell, his fellow junior world champions who are already established in the senior side.
Lancaster’s estimation of Elliot Daly, the young Wasps centre, is continuing to rise. The England head coach said yesterday that he expected Daly to push hard for World Cup contention when, if successful, he would be joining Joe Launchbury, George Ford, Owen Farrell and Mako Vunipola — his former team-mates from the 2011 Junior World Championship campaign.
Clearly, another year would be ideal. Without time to play with, however, Lancaster is toying with the question of young talent, how fast he can promote it and how quickly it can settle.
He would love to have Slade, the 21-year-old Exeter Chiefs player, in his group, not only for his versatility, but also because Slade may be the destination at which Lancaster arrives after years of wandering in search of his ideal No 12.
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Lancaster is unlikely to pick him for Saturday’s game against Scotland, but he has been thinking hard on the matter.
“The more I see him, the more I think he’s got fantastic potential,” Lancaster said yesterday. “I’d like to look at him in the future, whether that’s short-term, Saturday or a week on Saturday, or the World Cup camp, where I think for definite he’ll be in it.”
Slade has two days in camp now to stake his claim, but if Luther Burrell is fit to train today, as expected, the latter will retain his position as starting No 12 and Billy Twelvetrees, the Gloucester centre, will keep his place on the bench.
Even so, Slade is close. Daly, who scored a scorcher of a try for Wasps on Sunday, is probably not. Lancaster said that Daly “is another really pushing hard to put a marker down, probably less so for the next two weeks, but more so for the World Cup camp and World Cup squad”. However, it remains hard to see anyone breaking in from so far out, so close to the event.
When Lancaster announces his team tomorrow, he is unlikely to make many unforced changes. Mike Brown is fit again and sure to return at full back; Courtney Lawes seems certain to return to the second row, probably at the expense of George Kruis.
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How Lancaster plays his hand at scrum half is also open to question. Ben Youngs had a disappointing game against Ireland and Richard Wigglesworth, the bench No 9, delivered on Sunday for Saracens against Wasps in what Lancaster described yesterday as “probably the stand-out performance of the weekend”.
Lancaster said that Wigglesworth was “pushing to go further up the ladder”. However, he also suggested that Danny Care was certainly forcing his way back. When Harlequins played London Irish on Saturday, Lancaster said: “It was Danny Care’s best game for a while.”
Lancaster said yesterday that three players — Barritt (ankle sprain), Tom Croft (dislocated shoulder) and Henry Thomas (also shoulder) — who all injured themselves at the weekend would be out for at least the rest of the RBS Six Nations Championship.
One other player of note being invited back into the England camp for two days this week is Sam Burgess, of Bath. To the question, “Has he got a chance of playing against Scotland?” Lancaster gave the briefest of one-word answers: “No.”