Is it me, or has Lancaster lost the plot? Ditching Roko & Eastmond, 2 of the likely best back line in England; i.e., Bath, for the untried flanker in midfield, Burgess? Beggers belief.

What possible criteria (& I understand SL has lots of them) can he have for this selection? Nought personal agin Burgess, as he’s a decent cove & a trier by all accounts, but with a WC weeks away & what with experimenting wholesale in the hope that Burgo et all will, with a bit o’ luck & a following tail wind, that his team, esp his mid field, will miraculously fall into place?

Lanco has recently talked it up about another ‘vision’ for the 2019(!) WC with loads of investment in his youth policy for then bearing fruit, along with loads new qual coaches for future grassroots etc, etc.

Is this all a smoke screen to detract form his mediocre record v the SH & which currently puts it on a par with the tin-tacked johnno’s?

We’ve all heard ad infinitum form Lancs that England are ‘not far away’, ‘back on track’ or ‘closing the gap’ & so on, but on what basis does he espouse this stuff? Not his track record, that;’s for sure.

Why doesn’t he simply play the bath back line with his best add on’s instead of hanging out guys like Roko & Eastmond to dry. Aslo Cip will be lucky to carry the oranges… if he even make the cut.

Also, why didn’t he, e.g, at least look at Waldrom in the squad before discarding him… or not? I mean he was only the top try scorer in the Prem.

My main point is that I think it’s a disgrace to almost destroy potentially decent players’ shots at a likely once in a life time shot at a WC… & on the dubious basis of Gawd knows what basis.

And this when the ltd Farrell would need to break a leg to get out of the squad & Ford, who failed mentally v Saracens in the big 1 by kicking aimlessly down the oppo throats 3x in a row when his team needed TRIES. He & most others it seems, over rate Ford. He sings when his team’s winning, but he ain’t done all that yet at Inta’l level v the SH… & that’s what, in the end, really counts.

And yes, without Eastmond I would agree that there is a potential gap but personally I would cover that with taking both Burrell/Burgess (depending on how the latter measures up) and Slade, but that does mean losing someone else along the way but I’ll work that one out later…

Eastmond started in three games vs NZ last year, playing with Farrell and Barritt in one and Burns and Tuilagi in two.

He also started with Farrell and Barritt vs SA last year

He started one match vs Arg in 2013 with Joseph and came off the bench in the other to replace Joseph, playing alongside 12Trees

So, he’s played internationally alongside every England centre experiment for the past two years with the exception of Tompkins

?? Really, Eastmond?

He has played more than that hasn’t he?

I agree that Eastmond doesn’t fit in between Ford and JJ in an international backline, but I do think he could have done a job with, say, Farrell inside him and Barritt/Burrell outside him during the ‘other’ group matches. Remember the only times we’ve seen him in an international environment was with the Joel Tomkins experiment outside him – the less said about that the better.

But the risk in dropping him really comes if JJ gets injured – it leaves you with a centre partnership of 2 from Farrell/Burrell/12T/Barritt/Slade/Burgess. All have their own qualities but none will really worry defences with their creativity (Slade aside, perhaps, but I think he’ll be doing well to make the final squad anyway).