Waldrom flying in to cover for Easter

Easter missed England’s 41-10 World Cup victory over Georgia and the decision to fly Waldrom out suggests he is struggling for fitness.

Waldrom was a member of England’s initial 45-man World Cup training squad but he was hampered by a calf injury and was cut before the August warm-up internationals.

England manager Martin Johnson said: “Nick Easter is still suffering from a sore back so we will be bringing Thomas out as temporary cover.

“We’ve obviously spoken to Leicester and Thomas will be flying later today.”

Waldrom, 28, has played in all three of Leicester’s Premiership games and scored a try in the opening-day defeat to Exeter Chiefs.

The New Zealand-born player, who discovered last season that he qualifies for England through his grandmother, will arrive in Dunedin tomorrow.

Unless he is officially registered with the International Rugby Board as a permanent replacement in the squad, Waldrom cannot stay in the England team hotel or train with them.

Waldrom is not the official replacement for prop Andrew Sheridan.

The Sale loose-head suffered a tournament-ending shoulder injury in England’s 13-9 victory over Argentina but has yet to be replaced in Johnson’s squad.

England have also had continuing injury concerns over squad captain Lewis Moody, who made his comeback against Georgia after six weeks out with a knee injury.

Prop Matt Stevens suffered an ankle injury against Georgia while wing Chris Ashton hyper-extended his elbow in scoring his second try, although both players were confident the problems were not serious.

Attack coach Brian Smith announced that wing Mark Cueto will be available for selection against Romania after overcoming a lower back problem.

Flood says ‘wake-up’ call will spur England

Toby Flood believes England’s laboured victory over Georgia – and the brutally honest reaction it has provoked in the camp – could prove to be a watershed moment in their World Cup campaign.

England ran in six tries for a 41-10 victory over the Lelos but they made hard work of it, prompting a changing-room tirade from disappointed team manager Martin Johnson.

Four years ago, England held a summit meeting which turned their World Cup around and Flood hopes that the post-match review session will do something similar.

“I think it might work in our favour, it might be quite a nice kick up the arse,” said Flood.

“It might be a scenario of saying ‘okay, this is time for the squad to really pull together and say gone are the days of us getting away with this’.

“I think we’ll have a pretty open-air review meeting and it will be interesting to really pull out some points. We’ll get better and we’ll learn from this. It’s about time we took some of these shots on the chin.

“It’s hopefully going to be a wake-up call for us.”

The big difference between now and 2007 is that England remain unbeaten after two matches, whereas at this stage four years ago they had just been humbled 36-0 by South Africa.

But England recognise they got themselves out of jail against both Argentina and Georgia.

The Pumas missed six penalties and Georgia five as they failed to punish England’s woeful discipline.

Johnson blasted England as “sloppy” and warned they will fail to reach their stated minimum target of the semi-finals without an immediate improvement in standards.