Sam Burgess
Stuart Lancaster has announced England’s extended training squad for the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
The 50-man group will meet up at Pennyhill Park on Monday 22 June to begin preparing for the tournament, which starts against Fiji, at Twickenham, on Friday 18 September.
England will also face France home and away and Ireland at Twickenham as part of the QBE Internationals as they build towards the World Cup.
Five eye-catching inclusions are Luke Cowan-Dickie, Maro Itoje, Sam Burgess, Elliot Daly and Henry Slade, all of whom featured in an 18 / 9 victory for England Saxons over Ireland Wolfhounds back in January.
Calum Clark and Ed Slater bring the tally of uncapped players to 7. Each of them will be vying for a Test debut.
Leicester Tigers lock Slater, who skippered England in a 38 / 7 defeat of the Crusaders last June, will join the squad following his recent return from a long-term knee injury. Joe Launchbury, David Wilson and Ben Morgan also get the nod following long periods on the sidelines this season.
Elsewhere, wings Chris Ashton and David Strettle are included on the back of exceptional Aviva Premiership campaigns. In Saracens’ surge to a play-off against Northampton Saints, they have scored 20 tries between them.
Looking ahead to an extensive and exacting training schedule with 50 players, England Head Coach Lancaster explained his selection.
He said: “We are excited to name this extended squad, which allows us to look at a wide group of players who have been pushing hard for selection in training with us or playing well for their clubs this season.
“It’s great to be able to include Alex Corbisiero, Joe Launchbury, Ben Morgan, Ed Slater and David Wilson. They all missed the RBS 6 Nations because of injury and are close to returning to play or have recently begun playing again.
“There are a lot of experienced internationals within the squad with the likes of Chris Ashton and David Strettle, who are in great form for Saracens, coming back.
“It’s also good to have young players like Luke Cowan-Dickie, Elliot Daly, Maro Itoje and Henry Slade in there. They have come through our player development pathway and had great seasons for their clubs.
“Ben Foden, Joe Simpson and Tom Croft have not been included at this stage due to ongoing rehabilitation from injury but will hopefully come into consideration nearer the tournament.
“A number of this 50-man squad, such as Joe Launchbury, Elliot Daly, Danny Cipriani and Marland Yarde will be involved in the England XV side playing the Barbarians on 31 May following the Aviva Premiership semi-finals.
“There will also be opportunities for the likes of Dave Ewers and Christian Wade, who just missed out on the initial selection but could come back in further down the line.”
The England squad to play the Barbarians will be announced at 17:00 BST on Sunday once the Aviva Premiership finalists are known as a number of players from the losing semi-finalists could be involved.
Players from Gloucester would also not be considered should they reach the European Rugby Champions Cup qualification final.
This training squad is set to be reduced prior to the training camp in Denver and subsequently reduced again as the QBE Internationals approach, with the final 31 players for the Rugby World Cup being announced by the 31 August deadline.
England Rugby World Cup training squad (50)
Chris Ashton (Saracens)
Dave Attwood (Bath)
Brad Barritt (Saracens)
Kieran Brookes (Newcastle Falcons)
Mike Brown (Harlequins)
Luther Burrell (Northampton Saints)
Sam Burgess (Bath)
Danny Care (Harlequins)
Danny Cipriani (Sale Sharks)
Calum Clark (Northampton Saints)
Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers)
Alex Corbisiero (Northampton Saints)
Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs)
Elliot Daly (Wasps)
Lee Dickson (Northampton Saints)
Kyle Eastmond (Bath)
Nick Easter (Harlequins)
Owen Farrell (Saracens)
George Ford (Bath)
Alex Goode (Saracens)
Dylan Hartley (Northampton Saints)
James Haskell (Wasps)
Maro Itoje (Saracens)
Jonathan Joseph (Bath)
George Kruis (Saracens)
Matt Kvesic (Gloucester)
Joe Launchbury (Wasps)
Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints)
Joe Marler (Harlequins)
Jonny May (Gloucester)
Stephen Myler (Northampton Saints)
Ben Morgan (Gloucester)
Matt Mullan (Wasps)
Jack Nowell (Exeter Chiefs)
Geoff Parling (Leicester Tigers)
Chris Robshaw (Harlequins)
Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs)
Ed Slater (Leicester Tigers)
David Strettle (Saracens)
Billy Twelvetrees (Gloucester)
Billy Vunipola (Saracens)
Mako Vunipola (Saracens)
Anthony Watson (Bath)
Rob Webber (Bath)
Richard Wigglesworth (Saracens)
David Wilson (Bath)
Tom Wood (Northampton Saints)
Marland Yarde (Harlequins)
Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
Tom Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
englandrugby
So Dave King, Scottish South African based businessmen has been found a ‘fit and proper person’ by the football powers (SFA) so he will be new Rangers chairman. I know not related to this post or rugby, just a bit baffled by it and thought maybe some of you folk knew a bit more about the background and whether he has made the news much back in SA, sounds like he has been in quite high profile positions and been involved in dodgy stuff in the past…
GBS you know your law, is it quite bad to contravene Section 75 of the SA Income Tax Act. The articles on Dave King suggest he plead guilty to doing this not once but 41 times!
“In August 2013, King was convicted on 41 counts of breaching S. 75 of the South African Income Tax Act.
He had to hand over R706.7m (more than £40m) to the South African Revenue Service (SARS) for personal income tax and was sentenced to a fine of R80,000 (about £4,500) or 24 months in prison for each of the 41 counts on which he was found guilty.”
He must have gone done the route of paying his way (fine) out of jail or else he would still be inside and be in for a long time. They recovered a lot of money from him looking at the numbers mentioned, hope it was used wisely. Yet in spite of all this the SFA say he is ok to be Rangers football club chairman. Rangers got into big trouble in the first place on tax grounds and ended being pushed from the top tier to lowest tier in Scottish football as part of their punishment. They may be back in the Premier League next year after working their way back up, in some knockout games at moment to decide on promotion/relegation.
Here is some more background on this SA based businessmen who has been given the green light to become Rangers chairman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_King_(businessman)
@ Bullscot:
I believe the case between the SA Revenue Service and King is still ongoing.
It was (maybe still is?) the biggest case SARS have ever been involved in.
King was also involved in a nasty spat with golfer Gary Player.
King alleged that he “lent” Player a kahuis vol of money and that Player never returned it.
Player countered by saying it was a gratuity to help Player introduce King to some of the movers and shakers in the world of golf.
Altogether King seems at best to be a bit dodgy, and at worst…. well, let’s not speculate.
Glad to see Rangers doing OK in the play-off’s. Won 2-0 at Ibrox last night I see.
The SPL really needs them.
3 @ Scrumdown:
Hi Scrumdown, thanks for all that, not really paid it much attention until a few days ago when I heard on the radio that this guy has been deemed fit to be Rangers chairman had run ins with SARS so wasn’t aware of the Gary Player story. Mmmm sounds like just the right man for Rangers…
Agree and disagree on it being good Rangers won the first leg play off against Hibs and that SPL need them, even if they beat Hibs they still have the promotion/relegation match I think against Motherwell to get up. From a commercial/supporters numbers point of view you are right they are needed but I think they could bring a whole lot of other stuff they Premier league can do with out. I may be wrong but my perception is things have been a lot calmer without them, and if they come up some of their supporters will remember their demotion and hold a lot of resentment, hope am wrong.
4 @ Bullscot:
I hear what you say re the supporters etc, and it does seem like Rangers being away has given some of the other clubs the opportunity to flourish, but I really think that the SPL needs to improve the quality of football in order for Scotland’s National side to improve.
I had the discussion with a couple of Scots a few days ago, and they were of the opinion that the top 4 Scottish club sides would battle to hold their own even in the English Championship!
Any thoughts?
5 @ Scrumdown:
Bit of delay sorry, phew been a run around day. Not sure Scrumdown have been to watch to home matches of my local Scottish team, who are in the top 4 you speak about, but other than that haven’t seen much of the football this year so can’t speak much about the comparisons between the leagues. I think Celtic would do ok in the Championship but even they have not been as good as they were in the last few seasons.
Big problem is the amount of money coming in to football here and down south, very hard for Scottish football to compete. This season the Premiership didn’t even have a sponsor. As an example a player for our team will be joining Fleetwood Town next season, I didn’t even know which league they were in without checking – they are in English League 1, so that is a player moving from almost the top of top Scottish league to the 3rd tier of English football. This season we had a player on loan from Brighton and Hove Albian (finished in bottom half of Championship) for a time and he looked like a really classy player, most folk were sorry when his loan period came to an end. Having said all that the last few seasons have been our best for a long time, if Rangers manage to get their house in order as well as be promoted then it would make it harder again.
Anyway, finally a comment on this article. This is a big squad and Stuart Lancaster will be quite pleased that so many who were injured in the last international periods are back up and running, perhaps he would be even happier if Foden and Croft were also available now. One thing Lancaster will have is a happy headache about who to pick with quite a few options in some of the positions.
7 @ Bullscot:
Sure a decent squad, but what of the likes of Abendonen and Armatige?
Fools folly?
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