KEY POINTS:
Danny Cipriani may be the people's choice as England's first five-eighths to face the All Blacks next month, especially as the people can no longer choose the stricken Jonny Wilkinson.
But there will be no firm decision on the most vexed issue in red-rose affairs until a
fortnight before the opening Twickenham fixture against the Pacific Islands on November 9. If that sounds a trifle late from Cipriani's perspective, he is a whole lot better off than the country's form fullback, Nick Abendanon of Bath and Olly Morgan of Gloucester.
When Martin Johnson, the England manager, named his first 32-man elite squad last July, he did not consider Abendanon or Morgan. The former made it into the second-string Saxons squad; the latter did not make it anywhere.
Circumstances have changed, quickly. Of the two fullbacks in the test equation, Josh Lewsey of Wasps has been banished to the wing by his club - hardly a ringing endorsement of his form at No 15 - while Mathew Tait of Sale spends more time out of the position than in it, thanks to Charlie Hodgson's defensive frailties.
Given a free hand, Johnson would be tempted to switch people around. Unfortunately for him, the last thing he has is a free hand. Constrained by the terms of the new long-term agreement on player release between the Rugby Football Union and the Premiership clubs, he must wait until January to promote on form. As things stand, Abendanon and Morgan are off-limits for the test series.
"It is well known that a mechanism exists to introduce fresh people into the elite squad for reasons of injury, illness or disciplinary problems," said Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of Premier Rugby, the clubs' umbrella organisation.
"As far as the Cipriani situation is concerned, there is no need for anyone to do anything until two weeks before the opening match, as stipulated in the agreement. The issue of form is very different, because promoting on form would cut right across the deal we've struck. This arrangement, the result of two years of negotiations, is the one England wanted. It would make little sense to alter the system before we've seen how it works."
McCafferty tacitly accepted that the clubs could find themselves on the wrong end of public perception should Johnson's hands appear to be tied in selection.
"If England aren't successful, people will comment and the system will come under some pressure," he acknowledged. "However, the main thing from the England coaching team's point of view was to have more time with the players they chose, along with greater stability. We've been told for years that this would be key to producing the results we all want to see at test level. Let's see what happens. It would be a little counter-intuitive to start makingjudgments now."
As healthy as the Premiership movement is economically - annual turnover of 110 million ($293 million) is the biggest in world rugby - it has absorbed its share of criticism of late, much of it from a Scottish hierarchy furious at the English teams' refusal to release players for a recent training get-together in Edinburgh. McCafferty was having none of it.
"We didn't make the decision to cut the number of teams in Scotland to two," he said, "and it's a bit of a stretch to expect those English clubs who pay and help develop Scottish players to have a release system imposed on them from outside."
- INDEPENDENT