George Ford eyes England chance against Ireland but Ollie Chessum out

George Ford is in contention for a first Test appearance in 12 months after England declared the fly-half “fit and ready” for the trip to Dublin on Saturday, but Ollie Chessum has been ruled out with an ankle injury.

Ford was released back to Sale last week to continue his return from a long-term achilles injury, but he played 80 minutes on Sunday and has been retained in the England squad this week along with Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell as Steve Borthwick keeps his options open. With Ollie Lawrence also ruled out with a hamstring injury, Manu Tuilagi is expected to feature for the first time in this championship with Borthwick shuffling his midfield again.

“He is fit and ready. He’s fit to go,” the defence coach Kevin Sinfield said of Ford, adding: “Manu has been outstanding and deserves a shot this week. He brings some physicality to us and we needed a bit more of that last weekend but we didn’t get it. Hopefully he will provide some of that at the weekend.”

Chessum’s absence is a significant blow for Borthwick given the 22‑year‑old’s impressive form throughout the competition but he sustained the potentially serious injury in training on Tuesday. Leicester’s George Martin was summoned into camp while David Ribbans, Jonny Hill and Nick Isiekwe are all options to come into the side. But if Borthwick was planning to beef up his back row, with Chessum shifting to blindside flanker, he must now rethink those plans. “Ollie’s a loss to us,” Sinfield said. “He’s been great for us. We’ve played him in the second row but he covers back-row for us as well. He will be a huge loss.”

England have been picking the bones out of their humiliating 53-10 defeat by France last Saturday before beginning preparations to take on Ireland, who are ranked No 1 in the world and on course to complete a grand slam on home soil for the first time.

“[Tough times] leave a huge mark and you don’t forget because there’s pain with them,” Sinfield said. “Handling it is really important, people deal with it very differently, it’s almost a form of grief but we worked through it. We’ve had two good sessions, a better session today and we look forward to what is an enormous game against the best team in the world. If you wanted a test and a challenge to find out what character we’ve got, we’ll find out. At the minute it is horrible because it is raw and everybody is coming at us, which I understand and expect, it comes with the territory but we will be better for it because it will pull us together.”