Moody out of England opener

England were dealt a blow yesterday when it was revealed that captain Lewis Moody will miss Saturday’s World Cup opener against Argentina due to a knee injury.

Moody sustained medial ligament damage in a warm-up match against Wales on August 6.

He had been due to return to training on Monday but England manager Martin Johnson made the call to rule his skipper out of the match on the advice of his medical staff.

“Lewis won’t play at the weekend. He is not quite ready to go today,” said Johnson. “We hoped he would be fit to start training but he is not quite there.

“It is quite a simple decision at the minute to hold him back another week.

“The medics and the fitness guys take him through a progression of training and we hoped it would all be ready to go today but he is just a little bit short.”

Mike Tindall is the favourite to inherit the captaincy, having done so in Moody’s absence during the Six Nations and in England’s last two warm-up games against Wales and Ireland.

James Haskell, meanwhile, will probably take Moody’s place at number seven.

Johnson, who will confirm his line-up for the Argentina match on Thursday, stressed Moody still had an important role to play at the tournament.

“It is the opening game of what hopefully is a long tournament so you can force these things sometimes and that can go either way,” he said.

“He has been running around today so he is not a million miles away.

“It is just one of those calls: ‘Are you ready to participate fully this week and play a Test match this Saturday?’ Not quite.”

Moody first injured his right knee in January while playing for his club side Bath and the injury forced him out of England’s triumphant Six Nations campaign.

The veteran flanker suffered a repeat of the injury after Tom Palmer fell on him during a second-half line-out in the 23-19 win over Wales at Twickenham last month.