England's unchanged melody

Who needs selectors when a team selects itself? At this rate, Clive Woodward will soon be making himself redundant on the very good grounds that he has become surplus to his own red rose requirements. For the first time during his two and a half years as England coach, Woodward yesterday felt able to name an unchanged side for the third successive international. If the same 22 players who ran the legs off the Irish and stopped the French "tank" in its giant tracks prevail over the Welsh at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon, they will be in serious danger of surviving the entire Six Nations' Championship en bloc.

Who needs selectors when a team selects itself? At this rate, Clive Woodward will soon be making himself redundant on the very good grounds that he has become surplus to his own red rose requirements. For the first time during his two and a half years as England coach, Woodward yesterday felt able to name an unchanged side for the third successive international. If the same 22 players who ran the legs off the Irish and stopped the French "tank" in its giant tracks prevail over the Welsh at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon, they will be in serious danger of surviving the entire Six Nations' Championship en bloc.

If this is a coach's idea of heaven, it is also faintly embarrassing. Having spent much of his tenure warning that the demands of the domestic fixture list were guaranteed to result in player burn-out, Woodward now finds himself in the unexpected position of presiding over the fittest, most resilient team in the tournament.

Scotland, Ireland, Italy and especially France are in all sorts of injury strife, while the Welsh were saddled with a couple of minor concerns yesterday when Rob Howley, their scrum-half, and Geraint Lewis, their replacement loose forward, suffered calf and hamstring twangs respectively. But England? The cleanest of clean bills of health. Perhaps 40 games a season spread over 11 unremittingly purgatorial months really is the way ahead.

Of course, England have their long-term casualties: Martin Johnson, Danny Grewcock, Kyran Bracken, Dan Luger and David Rees are currently hors de combat for one reason or another. Yet Woodward has barely noticed their absence. "I understand Martin is playing for Leicester in a second-string fixture this week," the coach said of Johnson, his World Cup captain, "but he won't return to this side on any other basis than pure merit. I'll need to see him play a big game for Leicester, and produce a performance better than the ones currently being turned in by Garath Archer and Simon Shaw for England."

If anyone personifies the lean and hungry look of this England side, it is Jason Leonard, the senior citizen of the tight five. Leonard wins his 80th cap on Saturday - no ordinary landmark for a loose-head prop who began his Test career a decade ago and required major surgery on his neck just to make it as far as 1992. In Woodward's considered opinion, intense pressure from below has brought a new dimension to the venerable Harlequin's game.

"Loose head was one of the positions we looked long and hard at before the Ireland game," the coach said. "We have two outstanding young players, Trevor Woodman and David Flatman, chasing the No 1 shirt, and the decision took some thinking through."

On the far side of the Channel, the French coach, Bernard Laporte, was nowhere near as bullish as Woodward as he surveyed the wreckage of his Six Nations squad. Having already lost Richard Dourthe, Stéphane Glas, Christophe Lamaison, Alain Penaud, Fabien Galthié, Marc Dal Maso, Legi Matiu and Abdel Benazzi from his party for this weekend's meeting with Scotland in Edinburgh, he saw his captain, Fabien Pelous, and his brilliant flanker, Oliver Magne, limp out of yesterday's training session. Pelous suffered a series of back spasms, while Magne complained of muscular cramps in his leg.

It is possible that only six of the side beaten by England will make it to Murrayfield on Saturday.

One big-name casualty is in line for a representative comeback, however. Scott Gibbs, the Swansea centre who denied England a Grand Slam with his last-minute try at Wembley last spring, will turn out for Wales A against England A in the second-string international at Bath on Friday night. Gibbs has not played since December because of a damaged hamstring.

ENGLAND TEAM

(v Wales, Six Nations' Championship, Twickenham, Saturday)

M Perry (Bath); A Healey (Leicester), M Tindall (Bath), M Catt (Bath), B Cohen (Northampton); J Wilkinson (Newcastle), M Dawson (Northampton, capt); J Leonard (Harlequins), P Greening (Sale), P Vickery (Gloucester), G Archer (Bristol), S Shaw (Wasps), R Hill (Saracens), N Back (Leicester), L Dallaglio (Wasps).

Replacements: I Balshaw (Bath), A King (Wasps), A Gomarsall (Bedford), M Corry (Leicester), J Worsley (Wasps), T Woodman (Gloucester), N McCarthy (Gloucester).