England Test recall for ‘bad boy’ Care
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England rugby ‘bad boy’ Danny Care has been recalled for the third and final Test against South Africa in Port Elizabeth on Saturday.
Care, in for injured scrum-half Ben Youngs, is one of six changes for the dead rubber with the Springboks 2-0 ahead in the series after winning 22-17 in Durban and 36-27 in Johannesburg.
Alex Goode wins his first cap at full-back and Ben Foden moves from there to the left wing in place of dropped David Strettle as England seek to halt a run of nine consecutive losses against South Africa.
Alex Corbisiero is back at loosehead prop in place of Joe Marler, Tom Palmer replaces Mouritz Botha at lock, James Haskell comes in for injured skipper Chris Robshaw at flank and Thomas Waldrom displaces No 8 Ben Morgan.
Marler and Botha are among the replacements, as is centre South Africa-born Brad Barritt, who missed the second encounter after a first-Test eye injury needed surgery.
Care last wore the white shirt of his country 10 months ago in a 2011 Rugby World Cup warm-up against Wales at Twickenham and an injury ruled him out the tournament in New Zealand.
A series of alcohol-related disciplinary problems led to new coach Stuart Lancaster dumping him from the squad for the Six Nations in which England won four matches to finish runners-up behind Wales.
Lancaster gambled by taking Care to South Africa and he responded with an excellent showing in the first of two comfortable midweek victories over South African Barbarians teams.
With a shoulder injury ruling out second-Test star Ben Youngs, the No 9 shirt rested between Lee Dickson and Care, and the latter got the nod for the match at the 45,000-seat Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in the coastal city.
“Danny has bided his time in a very competitive position, knuckled down and deserves his chance,” said Lancaster, who took charge when Martin Johnson quit after a World Cup last-eight exit.
“We felt that the pack got some momentum in the second half last week so we have gone for Alex (Corbisiero) and Tom (Palmer) but I am sure Joe Marler and Mo Botha can make an impact from the bench.
“The guys did the shirt proud in Potchefstroom on Tuesday and I have no doubt that the 22 involved on Saturday will rise to this final challenge as we look to end this almost 12-month season on a high.”
© AFP 2013England: Alex Goode; Chris Ashton, Jonathan Joseph, Manu Tuilagi, Ben Foden; Toby Flood, Danny Care; Thomas Waldrom, James Haskell, Tom Johnson; Geoff Parling, Tom Palmer; Dan Cole, Dylan Hartley (capt), Alex Corbisiero. Res: Lee Mears, Joe Marler, Mouritz Botha, Phil Dowson, Lee Dickson, Owen Farrell, Brad Barritt
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- Danny Care, England rugby, Rugby Union, Springboks
June 22nd 2012 @ 2:24am
Ben S said | June 22nd 2012 @ 2:24am | Report comment
Corbisiero should strengthen the scrum, but will Palmer weaken it? Lancaster has selected two 5s, and whilst Palmer did add impact last week, the game had already broken up. Will the pair be able to stand up to the initial onslaught?
Haskell deserves a chance in the 7 jersey given his form for the Highlanders, but I’d rather he stuck to playing 6. I think he lacks the vision for 7.
Waldrom also did well last week, and he also has SH experience, so hopefully he can get some go forward ball. I think Morgan’s form has been undersold as he has done some good things, and can probably count himself unlucky to be dropped.
I’m glad Care has been selected ahead of the pedestrian Lee Dickson. Not sold on Foden on the wing. Positionally he is vulnerably, but Goode is a good footballer and can fill in at first receiver if necessary.
Don’t think Tuilagi and Joseph balances, but both are probably worth a second shot.
June 22nd 2012 @ 3:25am
Colin N said | June 22nd 2012 @ 3:25am | Report comment
Morgan just doesn’t look fit to me. He’s carried relatively well, but he seems half-a-yard slow, but Waldrom looked sharp last week and regularly tops the charts in Premiership games for carries, tackles and metres gained. I don’t understand why he has his detractors?
Agree about Foden, but he went okay in the First Test and Stretle was caught out defensively a few times. Wade, as we have seen in the midweek games, also has too many issues defensively and he’s not the sort of player I would like to see in our defensive line if South Africa get the sort of momentum they had in the first period last week.
He could have moved Joseph to the wing and brought Barritt back in but I don’t like that midfield, although Flood is the sort of fly-half that can bring Barritt into the game more.
Care might give Flood more time on the ball as well. Youngs still tended to crab a little bit looking for his forward runners and his passing wasn’t quite as crisp as it can be. It’s a loss, but Care’s distribution has been sharp this season.
June 22nd 2012 @ 5:19am
Ben S said | June 22nd 2012 @ 5:19am | Report comment
At the very least it’s a good opportunity to see how Waldrom goes, as we don’t have an abundance of number 8s IMO. Just a shame that Waldrom doesn’t get to play with Youngs too. Personally I think Waldrom is a good player. He has good hands (that fumble aside) and runs good lines. I presume he is critiqued because he looks too heavy, and is from NZ, although in reality he was quite a good Super player.
I’m glad Strettle has been dropped. His time has been and gone. Shame about Monye, as I think England could do with his power and pace on the wing.
Agree re: Barritt. I think Barritt is vital defensively. Our first up tackling last week was pretty poor… again.
Agree re: Care. Hope he takes a lot of quick taps.
June 22nd 2012 @ 1:46pm
Cantab said | June 22nd 2012 @ 1:46pm | Report comment
Yeah Waldron really good with the ball in hand, was the standout ball runner when played for canterbury, I wonder if he would have got a run this weekend if was still in NZ.
June 22nd 2012 @ 4:59am
biltongbek said | June 22nd 2012 @ 4:59am | Report comment
I am rather concerned about this test and not very confident about it.
Potgieter, Coetzee and Spies lose quite a bit in the physicality stakes, they might be more mobile and quicker, Coetzee’s defence has been good so far, where as Spies doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence in defence, he doesn’t have the ability to really tackle aggressively and Potgieter in combination is a green backrow.
Wynand Olivier is limited on attack to say the least, he may be able to break a line once in a blue moon, but has zero vision or creativity, he is half the player Frans Steyn is.
Aplon is gutsy however and on attack the most creative in that back line, however no matter how gutsy he is the question is how many hammerings will he be able to stop.
I think SA will not take England lightly on saturday and they will have to work wider of the fringes this coming weekend, otherwise we may lose a lot of ball in the breakdown.
June 22nd 2012 @ 8:14am
ScotandProud said | June 22nd 2012 @ 8:14am | Report comment
Not sure about the backrow combination and whether they will gel together. Haskell has to start punching his weight. Waldrom is looked down on because when he was younger he was seen as the coming All Black no.8 in NZ and then they decided he wasn’t after which he came to the Uk – he has a kind of reject tag. Also the heavy thing Ben mentioned.
I hope Care can give fast passes I haven’t seen him do it but everyone else seems to say that he has a quick service. Ah Saturday we’ll see how they do…
June 22nd 2012 @ 8:31am
Viscount Crouchback said | June 22nd 2012 @ 8:31am | Report comment
Good team.
June 22nd 2012 @ 1:32pm
Bazza said | June 22nd 2012 @ 1:32pm | Report comment
Oh Crouhie has emerged – bad luck old son your team has lost the series, nothing’s gonna change that. English”men” are just not up to the task. Best your lads stick to tiddlywinks or buy a few more Saffers. Ha! Ha! Ha!
June 22nd 2012 @ 8:33pm
Royce Strauss said | June 22nd 2012 @ 8:33pm | Report comment
Fear not fellow Bok fans, It is Pierre Spies’ 50th cap. Absolutely no chance of losing because the Spear will be on absolute fire. Hahaha….
No, in all seriousness, I wouldn’t be shocked if England wins this one. The starting 15 besides Kirchner started this series as a pretty good side, now with injuries you have players who don’t deserve to be there oozing onto the field and the bench getting even worse. What happens when the bench comes on all at once (yet again) and the Boks are behind by 1-2 points? Things will go from bad to worse and the game will be lost by 10 or so points. Then England will go home chest beating, feeling good about themselves because they beat the Northern and Southern toilet cleaners as well as the “Full Strength” Bok side.
June 22nd 2012 @ 9:32pm
Rugby Fan said | June 22nd 2012 @ 9:32pm | Report comment
No idea what the result will be tomorrow but I don’t see why supporters of any team should be banned from celebrating a Test victory. The record books don’t have an asterisk by the results.
Many South African supporters are rightly proud of a recent unbeaten run against England and I don’t see anyone trying to qualify that by looking at whether the opposition was at full strength in all those Tests. The 2007 tour to South Africa featured no-one from Leicester, Bath or Wasps, who all had club matches scheduled when the Tests were on. Including injuries, something like 30 players didn’t travel that year.
It’s a different matter if you try and draw conclusions about future prospects from a win over an understrength or unmotivated sided but they aren’t meaningless either.
For several years, France couldn’t buy a win against England, home or away. We registered eight straight wins over them. Then the teams met in the 1995 World Cup third place play-off in South Africa. England had been Lomu’d in the semi. It wasn’t an understrength team, but it was one which had no interest in playing another game. We lost, and the way France celebrated was a sign the spell had been broken. We lost our next three meetings with them too, and neither side has put together a string of more than three wins since. When England went unbeaten against Southern opposition in a run from 2000-2003, we still dropped games to France.
It’s in the interests of all three losing teams to come away with a win tomorrow. England need to break that South African streak; Wales have a monkey on their back with their inability to down the Wallabies and Ireland have never beaten New Zealand. It won’t make them the better teams because they have already lost the series. It can break the rhythm, though, as the Wallabies found when they finally managed to down the All Blacks in Hong Kong in 2010 after 10 straight defeats. New Zealand lost again the following year in Australia.
June 22nd 2012 @ 8:46pm
Johnno said | June 22nd 2012 @ 8:46pm | Report comment
Royce strauss you are sth african. You know in sth africa there have been many spies haters for a long time.
-Many say he is overrated, and has a low work rate and goes missing in action. I agree i think he is overrated,and does have a low work rate.
June 22nd 2012 @ 9:10pm
matthew said | June 22nd 2012 @ 9:10pm | Report comment
I’m sure Royce was being sarcastic Johnno. It isn’t exactly a secret that Spies is soft and arguably one of the poorest 8th men in the world. Duane Vermuelen is almost guaranteed to replace him when fit.
Btw, massive blow to England, Corbisero has been injured and they’ll be starting with Marler. The 3rd test just got a whole lot more challenging for the men in white. I’m optimistic about the Bok side besides, even though there’s a real toilet cleaner in there named Olivier who probably wouldn’t get a start for Scotland or Italy but has been given many chances for the Boks and failed every single time.
June 23rd 2012 @ 12:48am
Ben S said | June 23rd 2012 @ 12:48am | Report comment
Oh dear… Corbisiero is a huge loss IMO.
June 24th 2012 @ 2:52am
KiwiDave said | June 24th 2012 @ 2:52am | Report comment
A pitiful joke of a performance by South Africa. They were lucky to walk away with a 14-14 draw. They certainly didn’t deserve it. Morne Steyn is in awful form and I would seriously think of dropping him. His kicking is terrible and his decision making is pathetic. When your own supporters spend half the match booing you as they did to Steyn the coach needs to look for alternatives.
Danny Care got man of the match by the way
June 24th 2012 @ 3:34am
Rusty said | June 24th 2012 @ 3:34am | Report comment
that was a pretty awful game…Steyn shot to pieces, ,no realy continuity and way too much aimless kicking
June 24th 2012 @ 3:48am
Colin N said | June 24th 2012 @ 3:48am | Report comment
Hmmmmm, where to start?
England were reasonable. Once again the effort was exceptional, but the defence was much improved. I’m surprised how much influence Haskell seemed to have in that area as I would consider Robshaw a better defender.
Flood was a huge loss and Farrell just booted the leather off the ball when he came on. With the exception of one kick, it wasn’t particularly good either.
The attack was pretty poor yet again (although it was difficult conditions), but there were signs when Flood was on the field that they were starting to build phases and have clarity in what they were trying to achieve in attack.
I also thought Waldrom was excellent, alongside the two locks in open play, however, our lineout was dismantled somewhat. Scrum, with Marler in it, was pretty even yet again, with England perhaps having a slight edge overall. It’s certainly been a really productive tour for Marler and I was impressed with him today – he effectively won that last penalty with his nuisance work at the breakdown.
Discipline also cost us to some extent, particularly when South Africa weren’t exactly threatening and England were successfully slowing their ball down.
It would have been nice to see Joseph with his hands on the ball more, but he defended well today. Finally, was impressed with Goode, he has that element of class about him – a very good footballer.
Certainly, it makes selections difficult in that position for Lancaster. We’ve had three different full-backs in three different Tests and all have performed well.
June 24th 2012 @ 4:07am
Ben S said | June 24th 2012 @ 4:07am | Report comment
Farrell’s kick through when we were 5 metres out… Really? The drop goal effort was lame too, but the forwards seemed pretty fatigued, and no real inroads were being made. I just don’t see him as a 10. Agree re: Flood.
Agree re: Goode too.
Some poor decision making, and IMO some fluffed first up tackles, but there were some big hits going around and what was a comparatively lightweight England tight five really put themselves about.
Should be a good foundation for the future.
Lots more to say, but am a bit rugby-ed out ATM.
June 24th 2012 @ 3:54am
King of the Gorgonites said | June 24th 2012 @ 3:54am | Report comment
Well it’s not a loss for England……