England’s “angry” men will not include Andrew Sheridan – who seldom seems moved to anger – when they go looking for redemption in Rome on Sunday. The Sale Sharks prop has again fallen foul of an unusual ailment and will miss the match against Italy when the RBS Six Nations Championship continues this weekend, although, unlike several injured colleagues, he should have recovered for round three.
Brian Ashton, the head coach, has been plagued by withdrawals throughout his tenure and four of the five changes he made to the XV beaten 26-19 by Wales were forced by injury. Sheridan, who suffered adverse reactions to insect bites while training in Bath last year, was dispatched to a local clinic on Tuesday after a cut heel became infected and has failed to recover in time.
He developed an abscess near his right Achilles tendon and, despite intravenous antibiotics and a minor operation, will miss the match this weekend. He will be replaced at loose-head prop by Tim Payne in an otherwise unchanged tight five, while elsewhere Ashton has called Jamie Noon and Lesley Vainikolo into his back division, with Nick Easter and Michael Lipman coming into the back row at the expense of Luke Narraway, who can regard himself as unfortunate.
But where more experienced heads were under fire, Ashton has stood firm. In truth, he was never likely to ditch such individuals as Jonny Wilkinson or Iain Balshaw, particularly not after reviewing the video of an England-Wales encounter that, in so many ways, was all England until the calamitous six-minute spell in the second half that turned the match on its head.
“There’s one or two angry men in our squad, quite rightly,” Ashton said, although they do not include Wilkinson, who does not do anger. Nor does he take much notice of what critics may say about the quality of his game. “I don’t want to be here if I’m not the right person for the job or if I can’t help the team,” Wilkinson, who stands four points short of 1,000 for England, said. “I’m not anxious about selection because I’m doing the best I can and if there’s someone better, then it’s not fair that that person isn’t here, and I am. The thing that makes me anxious nowadays is watching videos and thinking I’ll see something on the field that I should have done better. I’m still keen to drive this organisation in the direction I feel it needs to go.”
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The players and management have discussed what went wrong in the team on Saturday and Ashton believes that it will not happen again. “I don’t remember seeing that in any form of rugby I have been involved with before, with a team so clearly on top,” he said, although there must be a concern that the team leaders did not identify what was happening and take measures to stop it.
Having lost Lewis Moody and Tom Rees to injury, Ashton is relieved to have Easter back after the Harlequins No 8’s recovery from a knee ligament strain that has prevented him playing since the end of December. Otherwise he would have fielded a back row aggregating no more than seven caps; not that Easter is the most experienced of players, with only 12 international appearances to his name, but he is a mature, intelligent presence with a World Cup final in his locker.
He would have played against Wales, if fit, so Narraway’s demotion to the bench is not unexpected, while alongside him Lipman’s first appearance in the Six Nations is just reward for consistently good form for Bath. Payne, too, has put together a run of good games for London Wasps after recovering, a couple of months earlier than expected, from the knee reconstruction that he required after last season’s Heineken Cup quarter-final against Leinster and that cost him a World Cup squad place.
Vainikolo starts his first game as David Strettle’s replacement on the left wing, while Noon’s greater physical presence wins him the place ahead of Mathew Tait, his Newcastle Falcons colleague, at outside centre on the day that Mike Tindall was moved from intensive care in Hammersmith Hospital to a general ward.
The Gloucester centre suffered a bruised liver against Wales and has been discounted for the remainder of the championship, but Noon is optimistic that he can contribute to Ashton’s expectation that England can bounce back and develop the style of rugby they must play to be successful.
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Italy have only one enforced change from the team beaten 16-11 by Ireland last weekend, Ezio Galon taking over on the left wing from Pablo Canavo-sio, but they have been told that they were fortunate not to concede more than one try in Dublin. “On defence, we should have been better organised,” Nick Mallett, the coach, said.
England: I Balshaw (Gloucester); P Sackey (London Wasps), J Noon (Newcastle Falcons), T Flood (Newcastle Falcons), L Vainikolo (Gloucester); J Wilkinson (Newcastle Falcons), A Gomarsall (Harlequins); T Payne (London Wasps), M Regan (Bristol), P Vickery (London Wasps, captain), S Shaw (London Wasps), S Borthwick (Bath), J Haskell (London Wasps), M Lipman (Bath), N Easter (Harlequins). Replacements: L Mears (Bath), M Stevens (Bath), B Kay (Leicester), L Narraway (Gloucester), R Wigglesworth (Sale Sharks), D Cipriani (London Wasps), M Tait (Newcastle Falcons).
Italy: D Bortolussi (Montpellier); K Robertson (Viadana), G Canale (Clermont Auvergne), Mirco Bergamasco (Stade Français), E Galon (Overmach Parma); A Masi (Biarritz), P Travagli (Overmach Parma); A Lo Cicero (Tacing Metro), L Ghiraldini (Calvisano), M Castrogiovanni (Leicester), S Dellape (Biarritz), C Del Fava (Ulster), J Sole (Viadana), Mauro Bergamasco (Stade Français), S Parisse (Stade Francais, captain). Replacements: C Festuccia (Racing Metro), S Perugini (Toulouse), C Nieto (Gloucester), A Zanni (Calvisano), S Piccone (Treviso), A Marcato (Treviso), A Sgarbi (Treviso).