How a Newcastle hero missed England's least proud moment

It is the World Cup of the walking wounded. Simon Turnbull sees the parallels

So here we go, then – here we go again. When Kieron Dyer flew out to the Far East on Friday he was not the first England World Cup hopeful to set off on a wing-and-a-prayer mission. Already ahead of him in Dubai were David Beckham and Nicky Butt, whose fitness for a global championship campaign remains in question, if not to such a great extent in the lap of the gods. And stretching behind the recovering Newcastle midfielder was a history of walking wounded World Cup wannabes – all the way back to England's first participation in the tournament, 52 years ago.

It was a Newcastle hero, in fact, who set the trend. On the eve of the 1950 finals, Jackie Milburn was stretchered off 15 minutes into England's last warm-up game, against Belgium in the Heysel Stadium. The injury he suffered to his right ankle had at least one momentous implication. It led to Jimmy Mullen becoming the first substitute to take the field for England. It might well have led to another historic happening, too. Walter Winterbottom and the Football Association selection panel decided to pick Milburn for the trip to Brazil but chose not to risk the Geordie centre-forward in England's opening match, a 2-0 win against Chile in Rio de Janeiro, and kept an unchanged XI for the second match – the fateful meeting with the United States in Belo Horizonte.

It was only after the humiliation of that 1-0 defeat that Milburn was called up. Not that he or Stanley Matthews, who also featured in a new-look forward line, could keep England in the World Cup. A 1-0 defeat against Spain in Rio brought a premature conclusion to England's maiden World Cup voyage.

It might be different for Dyer in Japan and South Korea, but the finals have always been a painful experience for England players reporting for duty with lingering injury doubts. Nobody is more aware of that than Bobby Robson, the man who has been championing Dyer's cause since Tahar El Khalej's horror tackle at Southampton eight days ago.

When Robson omitted Kevin Keegan from his first England squad, after assuming the reins of the national side from Ron Greenwood, one of the determining factors in his decision was the "feeling" that Keegan's presence as an injured player for virtually the entire World Cup campaign in 1982 had been "more than a little disruptive". Keegan had been struck by the recurrence of a back problem five days before England's opening game and made a secret trip to see a specialist in Hamburg before playing in the final 18 minutes of what proved to be England's final match, a goalless meeting with Spain in the Bernabeu Stadium.

The irony was that Robson himself pinned his faith on a patched-up captain when he took England to the World Cup finals in 1986 and 1990. In Mexico, Bryan Robson lasted less than two matches before dislocating an already injured shoulder. In Italy four years later, the midfield dynamo broke down in the second match again. He needed surgery to repair an already damaged Achilles tendon.

And so England's latest World Cup coach must hatch his tournament plans with the prospect of fielding a similarly flawed team. With Steven Gerrard already out and Beckham, Butt and Dyer all recovering from injury, Sven Goran Eriksson must have wondered whether he would have a midfield of any description, let alone one fit enough to take on the rest of the world.

Still, some nations have had it bad in the actual heat of World Cup battle. Back in 1970 West Germany were obliged to play the final 53 minutes of their epic semi-final against Italy with their captain carrying his right arm in a sling – because they had already used their two substitutes when Franz Beckenbauer dislocated his shoulder. These days the German bench includes Dr Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, the sports medicine guru who has worked with Boris Becker, Katarina Witt and Diego Maradona – and who has helped Linford Christie and Jason Gardener to major sprint titles. It is not just England's footballers who have needed a healing hand on the international sporting stage.