George Ford returns at fly-half and Freddie Steward at full-back for England’s much-anticipated showdown with New Zealand on Saturday at Allianz Stadium in Twickenham.<\/p>\n
Tom Roebuck has recovered from an ankle problem and replaces the injured Tommy Freeman on the right wing.<\/p>\n
In the forwards, Sam Underhill starts on the open-side flank with Guy Pepper on the blind-side and Ben Earl at number eight.<\/p>\n
With Ollie Chessum out, Alex Coles partners captain Maro Itoje in the second row, while Fin Baxter, Jamie George and Joe Heyes are the starting front row.<\/p>\n
Head coach Steve Borthwick has again opted for a 6-2 split on the bench, with Chandler Cunningham-South, Tom Curry and Henry Pollock among the reinforcements.<\/p>\n
Luke Cowan-Dickie, Ellis Genge and Will Stuart – all British and Irish Lions this summer – are also part of a formidable bench.<\/p>\n
Marcus Smith is preferred to Fin Smith as the outside back replacement. <\/p>\n
The versatile Elliot Daly, who has trained with the squad but not played since breaking his arm playing for the British and Irish Lions in July, is also left out of the matchday 23.<\/p>\n
England: Steward; Roebuck, Lawrence, Dingwall, Feyi-Waboso; Ford, Mitchell; Baxter, George, Heyes, Itoje, Coles, Pepper, Underhill, Earl<\/p>\n
Replacements: Cowan-Dickie, Genge, Stuart, Cunningham-South, T Curry, Pollock, Spencer, M Smith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Ford returns at fly-half and Freddie Steward at full-back for England’s much-anticipated showdown with New Zealand on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-256970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256970","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=256970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}