In sport for major sporting nations, there is this thing called 'transition'.
This is the act of dropping your old stalwarts, who have been good, but just don't have the desired effect anymore in favour of younger or the overlooked players, with less experience but needing to gain more to become good at international level.
England fail to realise this. England will not win the World Cup this year i am sure, but if they did it'd IMHO be an injustice to other top teams with much better squads.
It is true that fielding youngsters with no experience will get you nowhere at international level, but in this scenario, where we are clearly stuck for decent experienced international players, that some experimentation should be used in order to see if the players causing a buzz at club level (like Haskell, Rees, Cipriani to name just 3) can adapt to international level.
It's rather like when England played Michael Owen in the '98 World Cup. He was an absolute joy and it was only when he was given a chance, he took it and showed us he had arrived.
I don't expect guys like Cipriani to win England a World Cup, but who is going to replace Robinson.. Cipriani would be a good player to mould into the fullback position at international level.
In my opinion, James Haskell, Tom Rees, Nick Abendanon, Danny Cipriani, Tom Palmer should have all gone, and selected guys like Dan Hipkiss deserve their place.
As the aussies said, england are the only team at the RWC who use a time machine to pick their squad. I agree with them.
Dallaglio
Farrell
Cueto
Why???
