England's big guns to miss New Zealand Barbarians game

By CHRIS HEWETT


While the Newcastle faithful are wondering exactly what became of Jonny Wilkinson, who will not be confronting the might of Valladolid at Kingston Park tomorrow afternoon after all, more than 70,000 Twickenham punters will spend next weekend trying to work out what happened to the England team they thought they had paid to watch.

The World Cup celebration match against a nondescript New Zealand Barbarians XV will feature the likes of Hugh Vyvyan, Pat Sanderson and Ollie Smith, rather than Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio and Will Greenwood. If this was the idea when the tickets first went on sale, nobody told the public.

Clive Woodward, the England coach, confessed earlier this week that this was one of his more awkward exercises in team selection, owing to the Premiership clubs' understandable reluctance to lose all their elite players for yet another round of important league matches. The eventual agreement was straightforward and to the point: the clubs would release a maximum of three players in return for a six-figure cut of the proceeds, thereby allowing the Rugby Football Union to market their hugely lucrative fixture as a festival-style homecoming for the conquering heroes.

Johnson will indeed be at Twickenham next Saturday, as will the likes of Wilkinson, Neil Back, Ben Kay, Matthew Dawson and Mike Catt. They may even be in kit, given that they are being spirited to south-west London by high-speed mini-bus immediately after Premiership matches at Bath and Northampton. What they will not be wearing is the white of England.

All 31 members of the World Cup-winning squad have agreed to perform a lap of honour with the Webb Ellis trophy, but only five of those who started the final in Sydney - Jason Robinson, Mike Tindall, Steve Thompson, Phil Vickery and the ever-willing Richard Hill - will be actively involved against the New Zealanders.

The RFU always emphasised that the game would not have test status, and never suggested that the elite England side would play en masse. But by charging 50 pounds a ticket for a fixture featuring precisely none of the All Blacks who participated in the World Cup, they are playing fast and loose with the public's affections. The last time the New Zealand Barbarians took on an England side at Twickenham, some of the great players of the modern era - Christian Cullen, Jonah Lomu, Andrew Mehrtens, Sean Fitzpatrick, Olo Brown and Michael Jones - pitched up. Seven years down the road, there is nothing like the same shiver of anticipation.

Woodward has at least half an eye on the forthcoming Six Nations' Championship, which England begin with a visit to Rome on 15 February, so half a dozen of the less familiar members of next week's squad could do themselves a power of good. Andrew Sheridan, the heavyweight prop who played in the second row for Bristol before moving to Sale as a loose-head prop, is the most obvious potential beneficiary, provided he stacks up in training and seizes his opportunity on Saturday.

Elsewhere, there are welcome call-ups for Charlie Hodgson and James Simpson-Daniel, both of whom missed out on a World Cup place they once felt was theirs for the taking. Hodgson, the clever little outside-half from Sale, will wear the red rose for the first time since injuring himself in the Six Nations win over Italy last March. Simpson-Daniel, meanwhile, has a chance to gain ground on his rivals after a year rendered almost unbearable by illness and rejection. The Gloucester wing is one of Woodward's likelier contenders for preferment, but he needs to catch the eye in this sort of environment.

If Woodward has a concern, it is over Wilkinson. The Persil-white superhero of the England team has been suffering from neck problems for the best part of three years now, and he experienced a relapse during training with Newcastle this week. "Jonny felt some weakness and pain, and was taken for a precautionary x-ray," said a club spokesman yesterday, adding that specialists felt further investigations were necessary.

Meanwhile, Andre Markgraaff has ruled himself out contention for the vacant post of South African national coach following the sudden death of his younger brother, Pierre, from a heart attack on Wednesday.


- INDEPENDENT