Rugby: Paul Hodgson replaces injured Joe Simpson for England

England have been forced to make a late change to their squad before departing on Monday for their five-match tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Wasps scrum-half Joe Simpson, one of nine uncapped players in the party, sustained a hamstring injury as a late replacement against the Barbarians.

Fly-half Charlie Hodgson and Newcastle prop Jon Golding, who both picked up knocks on Sunday, are fit to travel.

Hodgson, who left the field with blood pouring from a nose injury, and Golding, who was forced off after a blow to the ribs, will be reassessed when the squad arrives in Perth on Tuesday.

It is the second untimely injury blow for 21-year-old Simpson, who was also ruled out of Six Nations 2011 contention after dislocating his shoulder in December.

He only appeared as a replacement for the last nine minutes against the Barbarians in his first England game, taking over from David Strettle on the wing.

"We are extremely disappointed for Joe," said Wasps director of rugby Tony Hanks. "I am confident Joe would have made a very strong impression on the tour and performed really well, but now our focus is on getting him back to full fitness."

The 28-year-old, who has won nine caps but started just two Tests since his debut in 2008, will compete with Youngs, Danny Care and Richard Wigglesworth for the number nine jersey down under.

Paul Hodgson, who was originally named in the Saxons squad heading to North America for the Churchill Cup, appeared as a replacement in England's first three matches of this year's Six Nations.

But he lost his place in the match-day squad to Leicester's emerging prospect Ben Youngs for the last two rounds, and was overlooked for the original tour squad despite the presence of four scrum-halves.

England play a further game against the Australian Barbarians in Gosford on 15 June and a second Test with the Wallabies in Sydney on 19 June, before their final tour match against the New Zealand Maori in Napier on 23 June.

Paul Hodgson has been replaced in the Saxons squad by Northampton scrum-half Lee Dickson, while Leeds hooker Andy Titterrell will come in for George Chuter in the front row.

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Andy Robinson says Six Nations is more important to Scotland than World Cup

It seems there has been a radical rethink at Murrayfield. In place of the system where everything revolved in four-year cycles around the Rugby World Cup, Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, has made it clear that the Six Nations Rugby Championship is now his over-riding priority, and that even the autumn internationals play a greater role in his day-to-day thinking than the global challenge.

“The key for me is Scotland getting the right number of matches against the southern hemisphere teams in the autumn and we have got that, playing two of them each year. The other important thing is to focus on the Six Nations 2011. Those games are where we really need to improve and start winning regularly,” he said yesterday.

He is busy finalising the side that will take on Japan A next week mainly players from the squad preparing to face Argentina next month but most of the Glasgow players are likely to be rested and he will have to call some in from the Scotland A team preparing for the IRB Nations Cup in Romania but he was also keen to look at the longer term.

“I’m really focusing on the Six Nations and autumn internationals,” he said. “When we are there, the tours will be important, but not to the detriment of the other matches. This stage of the season you can lose the likes of Euan Murray, players who have had a hard season and need to rest or tidy up injuries. We are lucky this year that we don’t have many players who need to rest.

“The Six Nations is a tournament that we play every year. We will deal with the World Cup when we come to it, but it is only once every four years, we will peak towards the Six Nations every year and we are going to be judged on how we perform in it.”

There had been fears among some supporters that Scotland’s failure to land a major tour to a top-tier nation — along the lines of the three-match series that England, Ireland, France and Wales will all be embarking on during the next decade was a demonstration of Scotland’s falling stock as a world power in rugby. In fact, it is all part the masterplan devised by Robinson and Graham Lowe, the performance director, to ensure a steady progression with the limited resources at their disposal.

“I’m really keen for the players to experience not just playing top-tier Test matches but to experience playing in places like Japan and America. That can help us grow as a team and develop that winning habit. At the end of this schedule we can look at where we are in terms of things like rankings and how many players we have developed and we will have a handle on what direction we will then want to go,” he added.

“Scotland have never played three-Test series against anybody, we do not think that is the right thing for us to do at the moment. We cannot let it get away from success in the Six Nations and the autumn Tests. The summer Tests are a building block.”

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