Burgess set to start for England against Wales in Rugby World Cup

Rugby World Cup: England have opened the Rugby World Cup in style with a 35-11 win over Fiji.

Wales will be without a number of key players tomorrow, but sometimes an injury crisis can galvanise the team. Despite the warning, however, Gatland claims the 2011 semi-finalists have done nothing wrong and expressed confusion over how the incident had been dealt with.

Speaking at a press conference in Sunbury, Gatland told reporters: “I am sure you’ve all read the statement”.

“Both sides kicked their tournament off with a bonus-point win but we know we will need to step up at Twickenham on Saturday”.

“You got one former assistant England coach (Mike Ford) on the outside saying “I’m mystified that you dropped my son” and you select instead the son of a current assistant England coach (Andy Farrell)”. It’s either in the rules or not in the rules.

Barritt prefers inside centre rather than outside, and he’s not well known for sharing the ball, but Lancaster didn’t want to start less-experienced outside centre Henry Slade, even after the latter played with flair in the warm-up games.

Stuart Lancaster confirmed the worst-kept secret of the Rugby World Cup on Thursday when he named Owen Farrell and Sam Burgess in England’s starting team to face Wales at Twickenham on Saturday. The Gloucester Rugby man is still struggling with a knee complaint. While Gatland admitted he was surprised by the selection, he dismissed the notion that Lancaster’s side would be diminished by the likes of Burgess.

“I’d be disappointed if we’ve spent all this time over the last 12, 18 months, developing our attacking game to just suddenly tuck it up our jumpers and just try to smash our way over the defensive line”.

England start without their mavericks, flyhalf George Ford and outside centre Jonathan Joseph, composers of ambition and the team’s backline resurgence for the past year. “We were too lateral at times against Fiji and last November it was the same against Australia and South Africa until we went back to what we’re good at”.

Wales centre Scott Williams is relishing a midfield battle with big-hitting England counterparts Sam Burgess and Brad Barritt.

“It’s going to be fantastic to see them running at each other and hopefully I’ll get a chance to run at him before he can run at me”.

By Sunday morning, we’ll know if Lancaster was right or not.

The elevation of Vunipola and Burgess means James Haskell fills the back-row vacancy on the bench and Alex Goode is picked to provide cover at full-back and fly-half.