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Henry Slade posts a classy message about his England World Cup axe
By Liam Heagney
Henry Slade has broken his silence following his headline-grabbing Rugby World Cup rejection by England. The seasoned midfielder started four of this year’s Guinness Six Nations matches for his country, but he was a major casualty when Steve Borthwick last Monday confirmed his squad of 33 for the upcoming finals in France.
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The 30-year-old had fought his way back from shoulder surgery last summer to play off the England bench in all four of their Autumn Nations Series matches in November, their last campaign with Eddie Jones as the coach.
He was then named by Borthwick as the No13 starter in the championship matches earlier this year against Italy, Wales, France and Ireland, initially partnering Ollie Lawrence on three occasions before pairing up with Manu Tuilagi.
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Slade made his 57th Test when coming off the bench in last Saturday’s 9-20 Summer Nations Series defeat away to Wales. However, rather than getting good news the next day from Borthwick regarding World Cup selection, the Exeter stalwart was one of 10 players woundingly cut loose.
Borthwick on Monday refused to explain his specific reasons for not selecting Slade, stating at his media briefing at Twickenham: “Clearly each of the conversations I have with each of the players is a personal conversation, so I won’t share my thoughts on the decision-making process.
“Now there are good players competing for each of these decisions and I have said this many times, I decided you will have three players in the key positions, across front row, scrum-half, fly-half for the obvious reasons.
“What that means is that in other areas of the team, you need to have positional flexibility, you need to make some compromise. That is always in the balance in the selection process.
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“I think Henry along with all the players not selected, they are disappointed. Clearly, they all want to represent their country, they all want to represent England and they have all worked incredibly hard to be part of the squad. But I also said to each one of them they need to be ready to go should that call comes.”
Slade has now broken his silence about his omission, posting on social media: “Time with family will always bring a smile to my face. Gutted to be left out of the World Cup squad. Will keep working hard. Thank you for all of the kind messages over the last few days.”
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Keep working mate