Lewis Moody
England Captain Lewis Moody will miss his team’s Rugby World Cup opener against Argentina on Saturday as he has not recovered from a knee injury.
Thirty-three-year old Moody suffered a recurrence of the ligament injury when he landed badly in England’s first Rugby World Cup warm up against Wales.
After leaving the field early at Twickenham on August the 6th Moody missed England’s other two warm ups against Wales in Cardiff and Ireland in Dublin.
Sixty-Seven-cap Moody has missed most of England’s international season this year and has only played 62 minutes for England in total this year.
“Lewis won’t play at the weekend,” England Manager Martin Johnson told the Mirror,
“He is not quite ready to go today. We hoped he would be fit to start training but he is not quite there.
“The medics and the fitness guys take him through a progression of training and we hoped it would all be ready to go today but he is just a little bit short.”
Johnson is expected to confirm Mike Tindall as captain for the world cup opener after he led the team in the Six Nations and two recent warm-up games.
“We are very happy with the other guys so it is a very simple decision to hold him back another week,” said Johnson.
“It is the opening game of what hopefully is a long tournament so you can force these things sometimes and that can go either way.”
Johnson is however not concerned that Moody’s injury would be a hinderance for the rest of the tournament.
“He has been running around today so he is not a million miles away,” Johnson added.
“It is just one of those calls, ‘are you ready to participate fully this week and play a Test match this Saturday?’ Not quite.”
Johnson said that Moody would not be risked against Argentina and that he would be considered England’s next fixture which is on Sunday the 18th of September against Georgia.