Rugby Union: All Blacks to push emerging England

AFTER Murrayfield the New Zealand Test team have a settled, as well as awesome, look. Not much for the dirt-trackers to play for, you may have thought, against England Emerging Players at Gloucester tonight. You would be wrong, writes Steve Bale.

It may not them a place against England on Saturday, but these All Blacks regard this as no less an opportunity than the others regarded the Scotland game. It could hardly be more different from the Lions in New Zealand: their midweek team walked on to the pitch at Hamilton as if they were mounting the scaffold.

And duly suffered a record defeat, but that also reflected the difference in opposition between then and now. Waikato, then the New Zealand champions, and subsequently holders of the Ranfurly Shield, were as good as anything the Lions faced, including the All Blacks.

If that was a cruel twist of fixture-planning - saving the best till the last, when some Lions reserves had given up the ghost - it has been the other way round on the All Blacks tour. The feeling is unavoidable that, where they made it as hard as possible (and we acquiesced), we have done exactly the opposite.

As it is, John Mitchell leads a fully changed New Zealand line-up from the hammerers of the Scots against the brightest and best English rugby can throw at them by way of a third XV. Dean Ryan, the captain, is the only Emerging full international. Mitchell, by the way, led Waikato when they thrashed the Lions.

Yesterday Dave Sims, in rousing form at No 8 in Gloucester's win over Northampton, replaced the injured lock Alex Snow in tonight's Emerging team. The Kingsholm pitch has been covered since Saturday to protect it from frost.

ENGLAND EMERGING PLAYERS: P Challinor (Harlequins); P Holford (Gloucester), D Hopley (Wasps), N Beal (Northampton), P Hull (Bristol); M Catt (Bath), M Dawson (Northampton); C Clark (Oxford University), K Dunn (Wasps), J Mallett (Bath), D Sims (Gloucester), A Blackmore (Bristol), S Ojomoh (Bath), D Ryan (Wasps, capt), C Sheasby (Harlequins).

NEW ZEALAND: S Howarth; E Clarke (Auckland), M Berry (Wellington), L Stensness (Auckland), E Rush (North Harbour); S Bachop (Otago), J Preston (Wellington); M Allen (Taranaki), N Hewitt (Hawke's Bay), G Purvis (Waikato), B Larsen (North Harbour), R Fromont (Auckland), L Barry (North Harbour), J Mitchell (Waikato, capt), P Henderson (Southland).

Referee: D Mene (France).