Shocked Vickery has to settle for front-row seat

The delayed effect of a two match ban which had already stung the Wasps prop for £17,000 in match fees now prevents him from reclaiming his place for the quarter-final decider against Tonga here on Friday night.

Wasps prop Vickery, available again after serving a two-match suspension, has failed to make the cut for England's crucial game on Friday

Matt Stevens is preferred on the tight head and Martin Corry retains the armband, with Vickery having to take his place among the substitutes.

Stevens, a 24-year-old former junior Springbok who qualifies through English ancestry, went to bed on Monday night 'hoping for the best but fearing the worst'.

He woke up to be paid the biggest compliment of all — that he had done enough against his native South Africa and Samoa to replace Vickery as England's premier tight head for the first time in a career disrupted for more than a year by successive shoulder operations.

'Matt has taken his opportunity pretty well and Phil hasn't played for two to three weeks,' said head coach Brian Ashton.

'We think the best way to ease him back in is to put him on the bench. Matt makes a big impact around the field and in the circumstances it's the right thing to do.

'The captaincy issue was secondary to the front row issue. I chose Phil at the start of my tenure and stuck with him all the way through, but I'm perfectly happy with the job Martin did as captain last week.'

Ashton rejects any question that the decision can be seen asVickery taking further punishment for his indiscipline. 'I'm a bit more humanitarian than that,' he said.

'I suspect Phil isn't the happiest man at the World Cup but there's not a lot you can do about it.'

Nor will there be much Vickery can do if Stevens keeps firing on all cylinders and England complete their troubled journey into the last eight. In that event, the official captain will find himself stuck on the bench for the quarter-final the holders dare not speak about yet — Australia in Marseille on Saturday week.

To ensure they get there, England have, for once, reduced their changes to a minimum.

Steve Borthwick replaces Simon Shaw in the second row, while Lewis Moody makes his first start of the tournament in the back row instead of Joe Worsley.

Corry's reappointment as captain is no more than he deserves for his role in the partial recovery from the mess against South Africa.

A victim of one defeat too many under former coach Andy Robinson, the Leicester skipper never imagined he would lead England again once Ashton replaced him.

'I didn't expect to get it back,' said Corry. 'Brian rang up when he took over to tell me he wanted "Vicks" as captain. The old system wasn't working so he had to make changes. I said then that had I been in his shoes, I would have done exactly the same thing.'

The writing had been on the wall for some time and not just on the scoreboard. The bleak performances and bleaker results of last autumn prompted Rob Andrew, in his role as the RFU's newly-appointed director of rugby, to criticise a lack of leadership within the national ranks.

Since then, Corry has fought his way back — first and foremost as a player, before emerging from the Springbok crisis as a leader in his own right.

'After every game I question myself, all the more so when we are going through a difficult period,' he said. 'You ask: "What more can I do to make myself a better player?"

'We put ourselves in a hell of a situation after the South Africa game and didn't hit the heights we wanted against Samoa. We've had one decent performance out of three in the tournament and we are taking Tonga as a very, very dangerous threat.

'Captaincy is not something I strive for. The most important thing for me is that I'm in the starting XV. I thought "Vicks" would come back for this match but he's on the bench and will come on at some stage.

'When he does, he will take his rightful role as captain, but Matt Stevens has done a job and shown this is not an easy team to break into, which is the way it ought to be.'

With typical candour, Corry acknowledges that England's title as defending champions has become irrelevant.

'It pains me to say so but that's because of how we have played since we won in 2003,' he said. 'We haven't really done the title of world champions justice since then. Hopefully, we are now launching a challenge to the best teams in the world.'