Forster groomed to hit the spot for club and country

There is a widespread notion among the anti-Premiership forces on the Rugby Football Union that the professional club game is nothing but a retirement home for elderly itinerants from the southern hemisphere, and that England's chances of competing with the best are compromised every time some gnarled South African prop or bottle-blond Australian centre sets foot on these shores.

Just two points here. Firstly, England are world champions as we speak and will remain so until someone decides differently in France next year. Secondly, the Premiership team sheets tell a very different story to that peddled by the old school tie brigade at Twickenham.

Take Gloucester. Today, in the heat of a West Country derby with Bristol, they will unveil a 19-year-old tight-head prop by the name of Jack Forster, who is currently studying both for a degree in agriculture at Hartpury College and a doctorate in front-row skulduggery at Kingsholm. Forster may or may not be a dab hand at driving tractors and stacking hay, but he already has a decent reputation as a scrummager.

He is a member of the national academy, but the national academy will not make a Test player of him. That little task belongs to Gloucester. Just like the other youngsters fast-tracked into this afternoon's squad - the Anthony Allens and Ryan Lambs, the Jonathan Pendleburys and Luke Narraways, all of them English - Forster will be eased into grown-up rugby with as much tender loving care as a granite-faced professional rugby player requires.

"We have recognised Jack as a considerable talent and he has handled himself very well so far, but we have to be careful how we manage him," said Dean Ryan, the director of rugby at Kingsholm, yesterday.

Careful management is happening all over the Premiership. Wasps are slowly turning Tom Rees into something special, Leicester have introduced the likes of Dan Hipkiss and Tom Varndell to their back-line act while London Irish have three exciting products of their own academy - the wing Topsy Ojo, the outside-half Shane Geraghty and the hooker David Paice - in their XXII for this afternoon's big game with Sale.

What is more, the clubs under discussion fill four of the top five places in the Premiership. Any honest observer would accept there is more right than wrong here.

Of more immediate interest to England is the return of James Forrester to the middle of the Gloucester back row. Martin Corry and Lawrence Dallaglio are the No 8s ahead of him in international terms, but the unnervingly rapid Forrester is set fair for a World Cup squad place as a uniquely threatening impact player.

Assuming he stays fit - a rather large assumption, admittedly - he will travel to Australia for some Test activity this summer. Given the rapid progress of Varndell and Mathew Tait, both of whom made a name for themselves in the Commonwealth Games seven-a-side tournament, the shape of England's touring party could be very different than was imagined at the start of the season.

Not that England matters are uppermost in the minds of the three clubs most obviously threatened by relegation: Bristol, Saracens and Leeds, who trail the other two by seven points. The Yorkshiremen almost played their way off the bottom with epic performances at Sale and Leicester, but both matches turned sour on them in the closing seconds. Tomorrow, they visit Wasps - not obviously a four-point opportunity, but a game from which they badly need something.

"We can draw a lot of confidence from our performances at Sale and Leicester, but we need to start delivering results," acknowledged Phil Davies, their director of rugby. "We're in a high-pressure situation, so the big thing is to keep control of ourselves. Fortunately, we have experience of this and understand how to get out of it."

Getting out will not be easy, though. Bristol have a couple of winnable home games ahead of them while Saracens have targeted tomorrow's match with Worcester at Vicarage Road as a do-or-die fixture. Leeds need 13 points from a possible 25, just to give themselves a chance of avoiding relegation. It is a tall order.