ENGLAND'S TEAM

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 144, 14 December 1935, Page 29

ENGLAND'S TEAM

PROBLEMS OF SELECTION

England's first trial was to have bean played last Saturday. Pointing out that the English selectors could not afford to make mistakes when they set out upon their building efforts, an English critic {"Flaneur") wrote: —

The selectors were never happy last season.' They began by putting into the field for the first trial at Kirkstall a provisional England team composed mainly of the previous year's "caps," but found their experienced international backs routed by the uncapped men of the other side, and especially by Heaton and Leyland, who played very finely together at centre ■ threequarter. Good judges of the game'who were at Kirkstall naturally assumed that most of the Possibles' backs would be transferred to the Probables' side for the second trial at Falmouth, and that Heaton and Leyland would most certainly be given the chance- they had earned.

STRANGE MOVES.

But the selectors had other ideas. They picked one of the successful centres to play on the wing, and the other at stand-off half-back, with their county colleague, Bowker, the third of the famous Lancashire triangle, on the other side.

Nothing went right with England after that. Heaton and Leyland were pitch-forked from one position to another, and their confidence was so undermined that, if Leyland showed ability to play anywhere, Heaton never did himself justice, and was so dis-

appointing in the Scottish match at Murrayfield that some of the critics declared that his-reign as an international was over. It will be interesting to see how the selectors attempt to put their muddled work of last season right when they pick their teams. They have the call on a good many of the twenty men who played for the country last season, though J. R. Auty, with his usual bad luck, has been out of the game all season. But Gadney and Slow have been playing well together, and it is possible that Slow may regain the place at stand-oft' half-back he lost last season. MEIKLE'S "COME-BACK" BID. Another back who is making a great attempt to recover his position is G. W. C. Meikle, who has shown finer form in one of his matches than he showed when he played three times for England. Cranmer and Leyland have played together in the centre for Richmond, and Heaton and Leyland for Lancashire. i It seems very unlikely that Cranmer will ever again be picked for the wing, as he was picked in the match with Ireland last season. Cranmer is a centre or nothing, but so, also, are Heaton and Leyland. My vote, were I a selector, would be to play Heaton and Leyland, if both are good enough this season, together in the first trial match lon one side and to give Cranmer the best colleague who can be found on |the other side. Only by so doing can j the real worth of the two Lancastrians to a national team be determined. HINT XO SELECTORS. Except in the first trial game last season. Heaton and Leyland never had a whole match together as centres, though experience had shown that in county games the pair, after a mediocre | performance in the first half, had often shown brilliant match-winning qualities in the second half. They have been unwisely handled in their brief international career, and the selectors, last season, missed a remarkable opportunity of developing for this year a centre combination that might well have proved the best seen in international football for a long time.