'I always play as if it's my last international'

IF Dewi Morris, the England scrum-half, had as much superstition as he has common sense, he might think of taking a short hibernation at this time of year. Last season, you may remember, he went down with asthma in the autumn and so missed an alm ost automatic selection against the All Blacks at the end of November. Kyran Bracken, the Bristol scrum-half, played instead and became the wounded hero of a much-trumpeted England victory. What followed compounded Morris's problems.

England did not play in the first weekend of the Five Nations', and even though Bracken had only played one club game before the team to meet Scotland was announced at the end of January, he got the nod. "I was obviously disappointed," Morris says. "Geoff Cooke told me he wanted to give Kyran another go - which is the sort of thing I've heard a couple of times in the past." Morris had a right to be sceptical: it was March before he got back into the England side.

Those events still reverberate as Morris trains today with the national squad at Club la Santa in Lanzarote. Shortly before Christmas, he again surrendered his place to Bracken - not through illness this time but because the new national manager, Jack Rowell, wanted to rotate his squad as he had regularly done at his club, Bath. Morris went through the frustration of watching from the bench as England, ingeniously served by Bracken, put up a record score against Canada. Morris won't know his fate for su re until the England team to meet Ireland in Dublin on 21 January is announced - probably next weekend after the gains and losses of Saturday's Courage games have been counted.

If it is not the news he hopes to hear, Morris will react much as he did last year: go back to Orrell and train that much harder. "Playing as well as you can for your club gives you recognition, and apart from that you can't do a great deal more. But I think if you didn't get spurred on by being dropped, you'd have to give up the game. You can't continue on the crest of a wave thinking you're always going to be picked."

Last year, Jon Callard's last-minute penalty saved England's skin by a single point at Murrayfield, but an equally narrow, though far less expected defeat by Ireland at home brought the inevitable reshuffle. The strong, dependable Morris returned to facethe heavy French pack in Paris: "I think they felt that the experience I had would help get the wheels back on."

An 18-14 win over France put England back on the rails. "We played as we always do against them, very disciplined, very controlled. It wasn't emphatic, but it was a good win." And in turn this encouraged England to run through the Welsh, unbeaten so far,with "good opportunistic, attacking rugby". "I always play as though it is my last international, and these days you never know when that will be."

Still, Morris survived both the change in the England management and the fierce commitment of a South African tour following hard on a punishing domestic season. He remained Rowell's first choice at scrum-half against Romania in November, and was mortified not to have this confirmed in the Canada match a month later. He felt the team had: "got something going against Romania - though it's always difficult to succeed against a team that is constantly offside in defence. The gaps don't open up.

" So he had been all the more anxious to develop the play against a Canadian side who were more open and at least trying to attack.

All the same, Morris is more phlegmatic about these reverses than he might have been last season. He accepts that Rowell, who has been generally true to the squad that Cooke built up for the World Cup, was bound to want to experiment in the six Tests this winter. Even established players were likely to be rotated. He just trusts that his own known capacities will fit the game-plan for particular matches. "Apart from that, everyone knows I am going to retire after the World Cup, so I'll just have to try and concentrate all the harder to make sure I get there."