After agonising over the predicament for days, Brian Ashton decided to call time on Andy Gomarsall's reign and promote the farmer's boy from Sale for Saturday night's tete-a-tete in Paris with the relatively unknown French teenager Morgan Parra. At 24, the Lancastrian may have taken a lot longer to get there than his opposite number but his rise is no less stirring for having to wait.
When England finished last year's Six Nations by losing in Cardiff, the man they call 'Wiggy' was so far down the pecking order that he could barely be seen behind Harry Ellis, Shaun Perry, Peter Richards — all hit by long-term injury — and Gomarsall.
Wigglesworth has found it tough enough fighting his corner at Sale in competition with imported players like Bryan Redpath, Sililo Martens, Valentin Courrent and, from next season, Dwayne Peel.
'It's not come easy to me in terms of having everything handed on a plate,' said England's new No.9.
'But having to fight for what I've got has made me mentally stronger. Playing for England has always been my goal. You've got to back yourself in this game, play as well as you can and then leave it in the lap of the gods.'
Now that he has put Blackpool back on the Red Rose map for the first time since Wade Dooley retired in the early Nineties, Wigglesworth knows that he faces the biggest fight of all — holding on to his newly acquired status. Gomarsall, who clearly did not see the writing on the wall, gave Ashton immediate notice that he will not be taking it lying down and that England have not seen the last of him. 'He certainly made that clear in the conversation I had with him this morning,' said Ashton.
'He was not happy about being left out and told me in no uncertain terms that he will be fighting his way back. He said: “If this is a kick up the backside for me, I'll give you a kick up the backside from a selection standpoint”.'
Gomarsall, among the most heroic of those who did more than most to transform England's World Cup mission, suffered a double whammy — dumped not only from the team but the bench to boot as Ashton promoted two scrum-halves with 20 minutes' Test experience between them. Paul Hodgson's debut on the bench acknowledges his impressive form for London Irish.
With their changes beyond the return of both props limited to the No.9s, Ashton, an old scrum-half himself, would appear to have heaped a fair amount of the blame for their poor start on Gomarsall.
'Andy hasn't hit the form which he showed during the World Cup,' he said. 'We felt we needed more energy in that position, someone to raise the tempo of our game. Richard's a bright guy with the allround skills to bring the right players into the game at the right time.'
It capped quite a week for Wigglesworth — what with Sale beating Leeds last Friday, his favourite football team, Manchester United, knocking Arsenal out of the FA Cup, matching par round his parents' nine-hole golf course on the family farm and now becoming England's starting scrum-half in his own right. 'Not a bad week,' he said. 'If they were all as good as that, I'd be a very happy man.'
Andrew Sheridan, whose formidable presence prompted the French to prop up their front row resources, declared himself 'fit and well, at the moment' after a series of tests to check his immune system following his withdrawal from the Italy match with a blood infection.
'All the early indications are that I am all right and that I am not likely to keel over at any minute — well, hopefully not,' he said in that slow, deadpan delivery of his.
'I've had three incidents, two insect bites and a cut on my heel which kept opening up. I've never had any of these problems before, just these three episodes in the past seven months.'
After watching his predecessor Bernard Laporte turn France into a grim version of England and suffer the consequences, Marc Lievremont is planning a more subtle approach.
'Trying to beat England with their own weapons — conquest, occupation, defence — would mean going to the wall,' he said. 'The Irish match is a perfect example of what not to do. We refused to take responsibility for our game, we were content to react and hold back. We really wanted to push the players so that they make the running and impose their rugby on the opposition.'
I Balshaw (Gloucester); P Sackey (Wasps), J Noon (Newcastle), T Flood (Newcastle), L Vainikolo (Gloucester); J Wilkinson (Newcastle), R Wigglesworth (Sale Sharks); A Sheridan (Sale Sharks), M Regan (Bristol), P Vickery (Wasps, capt), S Shaw (Wasps), S Borthwick (Bath), J Haskell (Wasps), M Lipman (Bath), N Easter (Harlequins).
Replacements: L Mears (Bath), M Stevens (Bath), B Kay (Leicester), T Croft (Leicester), P Hodgson (London Irish), D Cipriani (Wasps), M Tait (Newcastle).
