The Red Roses are due to play France away on 9 November.
If we wondered last year how you keep 35 professional rugby players fully occupied, two answers might have been: seven of them aren’t full-time anyway and you have to allow for injuries. But now we have a single category of 28 players, and of them a worrying number are indeed injured.
As things stand at present (a week or so before that first autumn international), as many as six Red Roses are not currently playing. They are Amber Reed, Amy Cokayne, Bryony Cleall, Cath O’Donnell, Lagi Tuima and Vickii Cornborough.
Poppy Cleall and Zoe Harrison have only just returned to duty with a single match under their belts.
Maybe the two contests against France will be viewed like any other November test – a chance for the management to run their eye over the talent available, but here England face the challenge of the nation placed one below them in world rankings. (Currently: 92.12 and 87.36.). Surely two wins must be the prime target, home and especially away, where victories have proved elusive for a decade.
There is plenty of versatility around, but some pinch points are evident. With those two props missing, that leaves only Sarah Bern, Hannah Botterman and Shaunagh Brown. Brown has not yet started a major test.
Centre is another area where recent riches have turned to paucity. A choice last year of Emily Scarratt, Rachael Burford, Amber Reed, Zoe Harrison, Lagi Tuima, Carys Williams and Tatyana Heard has been reduced by three through lost contracts, and two more by injury. Williams is taking a break from rugby. Emily Scott is an option there; she is versatile and in fine form, but if she is to wear the No 12 shirt it would have been sensible to give her a run there for Quins. This has not happened up to the international break.
The French by contrast increased the size of their squad from 26 to 33 for the coming internationals. Safety in numbers?
At present we can’t get much closer to the likely line-up in Clermont than:
15 McKenna
14 Thompson / Breach
13 Scarratt
12 Scott E / Harrison
11 Smith / Breach
10 Daley-Mclean
9 Riley
1 Botterman
2 Davies
3 Bern
4 Scott A
5 Aldcroft
6 Beckett / Cleall P
7 Packer
8 Hunter (c)
16 ?
17 ?
18 Brown
19 ?
20 ?
21 Hunt
22 ?
23 ?
As things stand, several positions are in doubt. This selection omits Claudia Macdonald who might well get the nod as she can operate on the wide outside as well.
This is where the Tyrrells competition shows its value. The management has been reviewing all the 30 games played thus far, to pick out the players in form. It would be a pleasant surprise if completely new names appeared on the list.
The Red Roses will want to recapture their form of the last Six Nations. The Super Series was a tough struggle for them.
