RBS Six Nations – Grayson Back For England

England have recalled fit-again fly-half
Paul Grayson for their side to play France in the RBS Six Nations showdown at the Stade de France on Saturday.

Blindside flanker Joe Worsley replaces Chris Jones who injured a
wrist in
Saturday’s win over Wales.

Grayson, who missed the Wales match with a calf muscle injury,
replaces
Olly Barkley, who does not even make the bench despite being praised
by head
coach Clive Woodward for his performance against Wales.

Worsley scored England’s final try after coming on as a
replacement in the
31-21 win last weekend.
Back rower Martin Corry comes into the squad for the first time
since the
World Cup.

England must beat France by a minimum seven-point margin and stay
in front
on overall try count – where they currently lead France by 15 tries
to 12 – to
retain their RBS Six Nations title.

England have not defeated France in Paris by eight or more points
since
1992, an indication of the scale of their task at the Stade de France.
They had to battle back from 21-15 behind to defeat Wales at
Twickenham on
Saturday and recover from their reverse against Ireland in the
previous round
which ended a 22 Test match unbeaten home run.

But while England were not at their best last weekend, neither
were France
whose 31-0 thrashing of a woeful Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday
nevertheless contained plenty of errors.
Encouragingly for England, their lineout and especially hooker
Steve
Thompson were back on form.

Against Ireland, England lost 11 line-outs on their own throw with
Thompson’s erratic throwing-in a major contribution to the collapse
of their
set-piece.
However, against Wales normal service was resumed.

Saturday’s match will be the first meeting between the teams since
England’s 24-7 World Cup semi-final victory in Sydney in November.

Imanol Harinordoquy returns from injury to
replace
Thomas Lievremont in the French team. The towering Harinordoquy, vital in the lineout, missed last
Sunday’s 31-0
win over Scotland with an injured elbow.
No 8 Lievremont, who replaced Olivier Magne in the starting XV for
the win
in Cardiff, and kept his place in the match against Scotland, returns
to the
bench as head coach Bernard Laporte restores his World Cup back row
of
Harinordoquy, Magne and Serge Betsen.

Julien Bonnaire, who won his first cap as a replacement against
Scotland,
loses his place on the bench.
Montferrand’s Pierre Mignoni, is called up as scrum-half
cover —
an option Laporte did not take out for the Scotland match — and
replaces wing
Vincent Clerc on the bench.

> Laporte
“Seriously, though, I think this is the team to beat
England.”

And he was confident France had recovered from last year’s World
Cup
semi-final defeat to England.
“Sometimes you can use a bad memory like that to your
advantage,” he added.

The French Federation will pay out 62,580 euros to every player
who has
played in all five wins if they clinch the Grand Slam.

France:
Nicolas Brusque (Biarritz); Pepito Elhorga (Agen), Yannick Jauzion
(Stade
Toulousain), Damien Traille (Pau), Christophe Dominici (Stade
Francais);
Frederick Michalak (Stade Toulousain), Dimitri Yachvili (Biarritz);
Imanol
Harinoroquy (Pau), Olivier Magne (Montferrand), Serge Betsen
(Biarritz);
Pascal Pape (Bourgoin), Fabien Pelous capt (Stade Toulousain);
Pieter De
Villiers (Stade Francais), William Servat (Stade Toulousain), Sylvain
Marconnet (Stade Francais).

Replacements:
Yannick Bru (Stade Toulousain), Jean-Jacques Crenca (Agen), David
Auradou
(Stade Francais), Thomas Lievremont (Biarritz), Pierre Mignoni
(Montferrand),
Julien Peyrelongue (Biarritz), Clement Poitrenaud (Biarritz)