Barkley injury blow for England

12 April 2012

England have suffered a second injury blow ahead of their World Cup quarter-final clash against Australia on Saturday.

Bath back Olly Barkley, who was due to be among the replacements, has failed to recover from a dead leg suffered during training on Wednesday.

His place on the bench will be taken by Newcastle's Toby Flood, who flew out to join the squad almost three weeks ago after his Falcons colleague Jamie Noon suffered a tournament-ending knee injury.

Flood, who has eight caps, was unlucky to miss out on the original 30-man England World Cup squad. He has not featured in a Test match since England's defeat against South Africa in Pretoria four months ago.

Barkley's withdrawal comes just 24 hours after centre Andy Farrell was sidelined by a calf muscle strain suffered in the same training session.

Farrell has been replaced in the number 12 shirt by Mike Catt, who wins his 73rd cap at Stade Velodrome.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy notice .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in