{"id":243935,"date":"2025-11-04T20:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243935\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T20:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:09:07","slug":"roebuck-and-steward-injuries-likely-to-trigger-major-england-reshuffle-against-fiji-england-rugby-union-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243935\/","title":{"rendered":"Roebuck and Steward injuries likely to trigger major England reshuffle against Fiji | England rugby union team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Injuries to Tom Roebuck and \u00adFreddie Steward look likely to trigger an eye-catching reshuffle in England\u2019s backline for the Test against Fiji on Saturday. Marcus Smith, Henry Arundell and Ollie Lawrence are all in contention to be involved, with Manny Feyi-Waboso potentially the solitary starting back-three survivor from the victory against Australia<\/a> last\u00a0Saturday.<\/p>\n

The head coach, Steve \u00adBorthwick, had been hoping to announce his starting XV early this week only for that plan to be mothballed when Roebuck limped out of training prematurely on Tuesday with an ankle problem. Steward has not trained so far this week after sustaining a finger injury late in the win against the Wallabies, opening the way for Smith to replace him at full-back.<\/p>\n

Roebuck was an influential figure against Australia, his aerial skills contributing to two of England\u2019s four tries, but if he is ruled unavailable England are not short of options. In an ideal world the management are keen to continue their \u00adexperiment of deploying Tommy Freeman at \u00adcentre, which leaves Arundell and Cadan Murley vying for slots in the \u00admatchday 23. And if the dancing Smith starts at 15, a \u00adbigger \u00adball-carrying presence such as \u00adLawrence would offer useful midfield balance.<\/p>\n

Arundell, meanwhile, has not played for England since \u00addeparting for the French Top 14 following the 2023 World Cup, during which he scored five tries in a single game against Chile<\/a>. He has been in \u00adexcellent form this season for Bath and, with his 23rd birthday looming on Saturday, is \u00aditching for another chance to show off his startling pace at the highest level.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to have him back and to see him score a crazy amount of tries already in the Prem,\u201d the \u00adEngland assistant coach Kevin Sinfield said. \u201cHe\u2019s been good in training and is banging on the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Arundell, Feyi-Waboso and Smith do all start they would rank alongside the most elusive and attack-minded back three England have fielded. Sinfield is also convinced that Smith can develop into a top international full-back if he is not needed at fly-half, particularly in the absence of the injured George Furbank and Elliot Daly. \u201cI think he is a world-class full-back,\u201d Sinfield said.<\/p>\n

Marcus Smith could take advantage of the injuries to England\u2019s attack. Photograph: Paul Childs\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cA big part of his Lions inclusion, so I am told, was down to the fact he could cover 15. So we have got a world-class 10 but also a world-class 15. He is different to a lot of other \u00adfull-backs worldwide but as you know he can beat people and he can be that second ball player for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarcus\u2019s preference, and I totally understand this, would be to play at 10 but you look across rugby, rugby league and football and there is an understanding that people play out of position from time to time to try and get your best players on the field.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou only have to look back to the England football \u2018golden generation\u2019 when they tried all those different combinations but I don\u2019t think anyone actually said to them: \u2018You guys work it out.\u2019 They probably would have done if they were told that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinfield has played with and coached some seriously good \u00adplayers in both rugby codes so it was also a major compliment when he compared Feyi-Waboso to a cross-code legend. \u201cHe reminds me a lot of Jason Robinson,\u201d Sinfield said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I have come across anybody as powerful, or as explosive over that first couple of metres.<\/p>\n

\u201cRob Burrow was very explosive but he wouldn\u2019t have had the muscle mass that Manny has. Jason is probably the most similar player we\u2019ve had … his ability to pull through tackles, the strength in his hips. There aren\u2019t many players like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Injuries to Tom Roebuck and \u00adFreddie Steward look likely to trigger an eye-catching reshuffle in England\u2019s backline for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-243935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}