The shape of England’s side against Australia on Saturday was made plain on Tuesday. Martin Johnson may wait until Wednesday before confirming his starting XV but he has already decided on the ten players in his squad who will not be required.

Two uncapped players, Courtney Lawes and Ayoola Erinle, will make their first appearances on the bench and David Wilson his first senior appearance at Twickenham.

The only reservation that Johnson, the team manager, had yesterday was whether Dylan Hartley will recover from a pulled hamstring. The Northampton hooker was able to train on Monday and Tuesday but his participation will depend on his reaction this morning to a fitness test. George Chuter, of Leicester, is among the ten sent back to their clubs, however, so Hartley and Steve Thompson are due to face the Wallabies and Thompson, the heavier scrummager, is likely to start.

There will be a return to the international arena for Duncan Bell, the Bath tight-head prop who won his two caps in 2005 and celebrated his 35th birthday last month. But England will start with Wilson, the younger man by 11 years and an illustration of the new generation of England forwards, as John Wells emphasised.

“There are one or two key guys in the pack who would have played if fit,” the forwards coach said, referring to injured individuals such as Julian White, Phil Vickery and Simon Shaw. “But the long-term scenario is that they would probably not be available for the 2011 World Cup; age will have caught up with them.

“The likes of Dylan Hartley, David Wilson, Courtney Lawes need to get experience at this level if they’re to be worthy of a place in the World Cup set-up. We need them to be pushing through, putting pressure on Whitey and Vicks. We have a lot of quality young players coming through and it’s really important they get game time.”

Louis Deacon, who is set to partner Steve Borthwick in the second row, falls into that category, even though he is 29. Injuries and rivals such as Shaw and Danny Grewcock have limited his appearances to ten and, with Lawes breathing down his neck, he will regard this autumn as something of a last-chance saloon.

There are only four survivors from the XV that started the last game of the RBS Six Nations Championship in March but a far greater similarity to the side that played Argentina twice in the summer.

It is worth contemplating the alternative XV that could have been picked but for injuries and the need to play their way back into form: Delon Armitage; Paul Sackey, Mike Tindall, Riki Flutey, David Strettle; Toby Flood, Harry Ellis; Andrew Sheridan, Lee Mears, Vickery, Shaw, Richard Blaze, Joe Worsley, Tom Rees and Nick Easter.

Of those, Tindall has gone back to Gloucester to nurse his hamstring and Blaze remains with Leicester, assessing his sore foot, with neither necessarily expected back before the Investec Challenge Series against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand ends.

“I hope these injuries are an exceptional period and that, come the Six Nations, we have at least 90 per cent availability,” Johnson said. “But we’re not talking about excuses, we’re talking about performance. Players and coaches are used to injuries. Not this many, but that’s where we are.”

There is a bullishness coming from the England coaches at odds with the injury blows they have suffered. They believe their players are on the same wavelength, that they understand what needs to be done at the breakdown — where Wayne Barnes, England’s premier referee, has been helping preparations — and that they have club form to back their selection. They have revelled in a fortnight of preparation, with many from the same group of players they spent three weeks with in May and June.

“The glass is either half empty or half full,” Brian Smith, the attack coach, said. “We’ve had more time, we will try to put more deception in there, but if you try to get too tricky, you can come unstuck. We want to be proactive. Other countries try and slag England off as stodgy and boring but I don’t buy into that at all. Twelve months ago I was fresh to the group, I’ve a better understanding of it now, we probably make better decisions in selection and how we play.”

South Africa have lost Pierre Spies, the No 8, from their tour, which opens against Leicester at Welford Road on Friday. Spies required an operation on a broken finger so Jean Deysel has been added to the party and Heinrich Brüssow withdrawn from the team.

Mark Jones, the Scarlets wing, will miss Wales’s four-match programme after he suffered a knee injury in training for Saturday’s match against New Zealand in Cardiff. Morgan Stoddart, his club-mate, joins the squad as cover.

Possible England team
U Monye (Harlequins) 6 caps; M Cueto (Sale Sharks) 31, D Hipkiss (Leicester) 9, S Geraghty (Northampton) 3, M Banahan (Bath) 2; J Wilkinson (Toulon) 70, D Care (Harlequins) 11; T Payne (London Wasps) 12, S Thompson (Brive) 48, D Wilson (Bath) 2, S Borthwick (Saracens, captain) 50, L Deacon (Leicester) 10, T Croft (Leicester) 13, L Moody (Leicester) 53, J Crane (Leicester) 2. Total caps: 322 Replacements: D Hartley (Northampton) 11, D Bell (Bath) 2, C Lawes (Northampton) 0, J Haskell (Stade Français) 19, P Hodgson (London Irish) 3, A Goode (Brive) 16, A Erinle (Biarritz) 0. Total caps among replacements: 51