Tomkins got an opportunity to play in England

               England are facing a midfield conundrum for their forthcoming autumn Test series following the news that Manu Tuilagi will be sidelined because of injury until November at the earliest. The Leicester and Lions centre has damaged a pectoral muscle, leaving England's head coach Stuart Lancaster with a significant hole to fill. It would be quite wrong to suggest that Stuart Lancaster, the England coach, was anything other than disappointed when he lost two of his more reliable players, the ultra-athletic Leicester flanker Tom Croft and the tough as old boots Saracens centre Brad Barritt, to long term injury earlier this month, but he could at least rest easy in the knowledge  that he had ben spared a couple of widkedly difficult selection decisions. The news that Manu Tuilagi, the human bowling ball, has run out of alley for the time being leaves the red-rose hierarchy in a rare old mess.

                Tuilagi performed at something like his destructive best in Leicester's comprehensive victory over Newcastle at Welford Road last weekend, but he Samoan-born midfielder ended the game in pain. He went for a wide out tackle with his arm outstretched late in the match and picked up a chest injury, reported the Premiership champions rugby director Richard Cockerill. Lancaster's main headache is that none of the three remaining fit centres in his senior squad Billy Twelvetrees, Kyle Eastmond and the versatile Owen Farrell play at outside centre regularly. Assuming Farrell is not shifted from fly-half into a wider channel, it means a couple of players at least can expect to be promoted from the Saxons when Lancaster confirms his autumn squad in mid-october.

                Tait was used and abused by more than one national coach during his frustrating career as a centre, yet had he still been playing in the position, he would have been the obvious solution to Lancaster's conundrum. At the end of last year's Six Nations, when England saw their Grand slam credentials cruelly exposed by the rampant Welsh, it was generally accepted that the Barritt- Tuilagi axis had run its course and that Twelvetrees, armed with passing and kicking games vastly superior to either of the incumbents, would have to be incorporated into a one dimensional midfield. Lancaster has clearly been thinking along those lines.