If the World cup was now

You are joking!! Youngs / Wilko !?

Must be Care / Flood, if you want an attacking game using that handy back line of yours?

Bring Wilko on at 60 to keep the scoreboard ticking, make Youngs watch from the side, behind a fence preferably

Nice to se a welshmun so passionate about the England team WWW when you say bring JW on at 60 I presume you mean 60 points on the board

Seriously - Care showed better form at the back end of the season but Youngs at his best is a better player - ie Eng v Aus/Wal/Italia and his season with the Tigers - he may be bearing some scars from Dublin but unless his season starts badly I would pick him (assuming he recovers from his op)

Flood fell apart a bit towards the end of the season - whereas good old JW has been playing out of his skin at Toulon - they love him there and they know their onions - he was voted best foreign player in France. If there is one thing JW gives you - experience and the ability to handle the pressure -

I sense the sarcasm over the back line but I think it may surprise a few

Lydneyian

In all fairness tho. the WC is literally almost NOW so u might have called your article, "the England Team i would pick for the WC"

If MJ does not have a first 15 in mind then he's not doing his job. Thats not to say that there in no competition but he must have a 15 in his head, waiting to see if fringe players can make an impact in the warm ups.

Tindall is a weak link for me. Good player but in the SH on hard ground(maybe) he's gona struggle.

As for the most controversial selection at SH im with you. Youngs capitulation in the 6n's shows his age and inexperience, I suppose he is suppose to have learned from it but its a risk to start him against the big boys.

I guess its lucky that the group is far from daunting

Im not so sure Dingbat - I think we REALLY missed Tindall versus Ireland - I would drop Moody as captain put him on the bench and have Tindall as captain - No Glos bias at all either

He does nothing for me.Decent defender i suppose but facing up against his peers from the SH and he will suffer.

What predictions for England while were on the subject? Worst and best case scenario? And can they win it?

For me they cant win it.
Best case scenario i would say 3rd place playoff.

Worst case scenario, no qualification form the group. but thats about as unlikely anything.

My prediction for England would be this. comfortable showing in the group because is not a difficult group, and they will get beaten by the first SH side they meet in the knockout stages.

Perhaps a bit bleak.

Well the thing is Ding - I followed England around France last time and after some of the dross chucked at us I was as surprised as anyone to be in Paris watching a world cup final - History is NOT the be all and end all but ignore it at your peril - We are a good world cup side - one of the best - With a good wind we can win the trophy but it needs to be a good wind

I once wrote an article on 606 about world cup stats - I thnk you would find it an interesting read

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A63637473

The only teams that I feel frighten me as a fan at the moment are - believe it or not Ireland purely based on the fact that they have the hoodoo on us and our players have issues playing them - and the ABs because we have always struggled with them
Strangly i belive we can beat australia for the opposite reason to above - and I feel we would beat france - If one of these teams can beat the ABs - and I believe they can - we can win it - however if france beat them in the group - we will probably play the ABs in the quarters and then its bye bye

So if we win our group and play france and Aus we can make the final - all being well

Of course I have failed to mention the Boks - thats because I have no clues as to how good they are currently

As for the worst case - Im not sure the Pumas are the team they were - but I have a worry for scotland - they really raise their game against us and they have been steadily improving year on year - we have to win those games - Im hoping to leave the going out at the group stage glory to the Welsh

Disclaimer - I reserve the right to have biased optamism when putting thought into the prospects of the national team

Lydneyian

You know something mate. After the last world cup i said something down at my local club to a group of lads/friends and it split the room and caused an argument.

It was during the final and along time after we had crashed out in the group stages. so anyway, most of the lads there were cheering on the boks and there was an air of England don't deserve to be in the final having got a bit lucky etc etc.

So i turned to them and simple said this
.
"Well If we "Irleand" had half the "F"n self belief and courage that they have we might have got out of the "F"n group!"

So believe me when i say that i don't ever count against you lot, because if world cups were won on self belief and courage you would have won them all.

Anyway thats just an example of where i rate you when it comes to world cup time, but this year your too young and a little unsure what to do then the brown stuff hits the fan.

So i don't believe that better then 3rd is likely.

If we could bottle our performance against you this year and take a little sip before each game we would do well but to be fair i have never seen us maintain a high standard for a prolonged period even the Grand Slam year saw us surge against France and then struggle in up and down form until the Wales game. Where England this year went from strength to strength and thats how it should be.

The last World cup was a bit strange - I was at all the Eng group games and outside of the Tonga game and maybe a few moments in the Samoa game they were awful - I was also in Bordeaux for Ire v georgia - again woeful (from Ireland) Wales went out in groups despite playing games in Cardiff and Scotland were ... well scotland - Im hoping that we all come out of the blocks better this time tbh.

Like I said - the way the groups finish is all important

PS as i may of mentioned before - this year I am by no means underestimating Scotland !!!!!

Best to expect the unexpected eh , but to be fair Scotland took a step backwards this past 6 Nations. i was surprised by how poor they were.