Stuart Lancaster challenges fly-half Owen Farrell to reclaim England place

England’s rugby World Cup training squad are nervously waiting for a penultimate cut of nine players to be announced on Friday.

Barritt said: “It’ll be tough for every individual involved but the strength of the group is that we’ll plough on and everyone will stay involved and stay connected”.

With Twickenham Stadium set to host 10 of the 2015 Rugby World Cup matches, as well as the England internationals against France and Ireland during the build-up to the tournament, the campaign will largely focus on the Richmond and Hounslow areas of London, raising awareness of increased demand.

They kick off their World Cup pool A games against Fiji on September 18.

With the top two teams advancing automatically to the World Cup quarter-finals, many have predicted England, Wales and Australia will be the main contenders but Lancaster is also wary of the South Pacific island nation.

Centre Manu Tuilagi was ruled out of the England squad after admitting to assaulting police officers and coach Stuart Lancaster would have taken a similar stance with Cipriani had subsequent charges been proven.

“Stuart has asked me to play there, and I will do my best job for him”.

“I’m not going to sit on it, there’s still a lot of work to be done”.

“I am quite relaxed in terms of it being so close”, he said. I am going to continue working hard but if someone says ‘are you proud?’, I would definitely say yes.

“I think I’m improving daily. But we are a long way from deciding that, and there are [warm-up] games to come that will help us to formulate that decision”.

“But knowing Owen as I do…”

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said at the time: “Police were called at approximately 5:15am on Monday, 1 June to reports of two cars in collision in Imperial Road, SW6”.

That means Cipriani will be available for the tournament which ends on October 31.

The Sale fly-half was unhurt in the collision but was given a breath test and taken to a west London police station before being released on bail.