When Martin Johnson decided to postpone for 24 hours the announcement of his England team to play Australia, inevitably the suspicion arose that even more injuries had occurred.

So badly hit have England been this season, with almost daily bulletins, none of them good, emerging from the camp, that it would be no surprise to learn of further problems before the first game of the Investec Challenge Series at Twickenham on Saturday.

It is understood, though, that the team manager has determined his starting XV and that it includes a surprise in the front row. Dylan Hartley, the Northampton captain, was unable to train last week because of a muscle strain and, although Hartley trained yesterday, Steve Thompson has been earmarked to play hooker. Thompson, the 2003 World Cup winner, was called up from Brive a fortnight ago and he has been preferred to George Chuter, of Leicester.

The delay will give England’s medical team the chance to assess whether Hartley can join the replacements, which may account for the official reason for the postponement of today’s announcement being “the number of players joining and leaving the squad over the last few days”.

The Johnson brow would have been more furrowed than usual when he accepted, at a gala dinner at Twickenham last night, the O2 award as player of the century during the 100 years in which England’s headquarters has been in existence.

Thompson won his 48th cap as a replacement against Argentina in June, three years after his 47th, and brings experience and presence to a front row that is expected to include Tim Payne and, making his first appearance at Twickenham, David Wilson.

If Hartley had been fit, he would have completed a tight five the same as that which played together three times at the end of last season (against the Barbarians and Argentina twice) but even that degree of continuity has been denied England.

Even so, Johnson’s expectations of this month will not have changed. Three wins from three, regardless of the quality of the opposition provided by Australia, Argentina and New Zealand, remains his goal and at the start of this season there was every reason to believe that to be attainable.

His players had made a significant contribution to a happy Lions tour in South Africa and advances had been made during last season’s RBS Six Nations Championship. Nor did the opposition look in the greatest shape: Australia finished at the foot of the Tri-Nations table, Argentina have no continuity and are missing key players while the All Blacks lost at home to France in June.

The waters, though, have been muddied. Injuries have ravaged Johnson’s squad and standards in the Guinness Premiership do not suggest that England will carry anything special by way of style or playing philosophy into this series. The three highest-placed clubs in the Premiership — Saracens, London Irish and London Wasps — are likely to contribute no more than two players between them to the XV, so it is not as though the winning habit courses through their veins.

Few of Australia’s first-choice side are that familiar with British conditions, Argentina are not what they were when they beat England at Twickenham in 2006 and New Zealand . . . well, they remain, as ever, one of the hardest teams to beat on the planet. So England, even this England, must consider two out of three wins a minimum target and, if a victorious wind fills their sails, they should have a shout against the All Blacks.

But the ifs remain. England do not look to have a world-beating pack. Who has, these days, outside South Africa? The rolling maul may have returned but Simon Shaw has not, yet, and without the Wasps lock, they will do well to achieve set-piece parity with Australia, whose forwards have improved significantly. The return of Jonny Wilkinson will lift the confidence of his colleagues but one player alone cannot win this series. Johnson’s England are back to basics again.

Johnson’s tenure

Played 11
Won 5
Lost 6
Points for 248
Against 224

2008

England 39 Pacific Islanders 13
England 14 Australia 28
England 6 South Africa 42
England 6 New Zealand 32

2009

England 36 Italy 11
Wales 23 England 15
Ireland 14 England 13
England 34 France 10
England 26 Scotland 12
England 37 Argentina 15
Argentina 24 England 22