Dragons' fire dampened with Charvis on sidelines

England have lost their fair share of high-class players as they head towards their awkward Six Nations Championship opener with Wales in Cardiff on Saturday week - Jonny Wilkinson, Mike Tindall, Will Greenwood and Martin Corry, to name but four - and the body count from another punishing campaign of club rugby leaves them looking more than a little vulnerable.

England have lost their fair share of high-class players as they head towards their awkward Six Nations Championship opener with Wales in Cardiff on Saturday week - Jonny Wilkinson, Mike Tindall, Will Greenwood and Martin Corry, to name but four - and the body count from another punishing campaign of club rugby leaves them looking more than a little vulnerable.

They are not alone, though. The Welsh, less able to absorb such losses for the very good reason that they have fewer quality personnel available to them, are seriously worried that two Lions flankers, Colin Charvis and Martyn Williams, will miss the fixture at the Millennium Stadium.

Charvis has not made much progress in recovering from the foot injury he suffered while helping Newcastle to their important Heineken Cup victory over the Newport-Gwent Dragons at Kingston Park 10 days ago. His countryman has problems with a disc in his neck. Mike Ruddock, the national coach, has whistled up one of Williams' colleagues at Cardiff Blues, Robin Sowden-Taylor, as cover and the Neath-Swansea Ospreys breakaway Richie Pugh as a fully fledged member of the squad.

Much to Ruddock's frustration, there is little prospect of Charvis making the England game. "Further investigations have been carried out by our medical staff, and these have revealed damage to the ligament that surrounds the bone between the first and second metatarsal on Colin's right foot," the coach said. "The prognosis suggests that I could be out for another two or three weeks,"Charvis reported. "This is obviously a huge disappointment, but all I can do is get my head down and continue with the programme of rest and treatment the Wales team doctors have prescribed."

Across the water in France, the Tricolore coach Bernard Laporte is not having it all his own way either. Several members of last season's Grand Slam-winning team - the full-back Nicolas Brusque, the centre Yannick Jauzion and the flankers Serge Betsen and Olivier Magne - are injured and have been left out of the 22-man party for the match with Scotland in Paris on 5 February.

Betsen, perhaps the single most impressive player in Europe, may recover quickly from his thigh trouble but he will still miss the second-round match with England at Twickenham later this month if a European Rugby Cup disciplinary panel throws the book at him for his role in an incident 11 days ago that left Stuart Abbott, the Wasps centre, nursing a broken leg.

Laporte has fleshed out his back-row options by selecting Yannick Nyanga, of Béziers, and Julien Bonnaire, of Bourgoin, along with Sebastien Chabal, who has produced some immense performances at No 8 for Sale in this season's Premiership. Ludovic Valbon, a 28-year-old centre from Brive, is also included, as are Gregory Lamboley, the Toulouse lock, and Yann Delaigue, the Castres outside-half.

The surprise omissions are Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, the goal-kicking scrum- half from Toulouse, and the Biarritz No 8 Thomas Lièvremont, one of the star turns in this season's Heineken Cup.

The draw for the semi-finals of that competition took place yesterday, more than two months ahead of the scheduled dates for the quarter-finals. The winners of the Leinster- Leicester tie in Dublin on 2 April will have home advantage - or rather, the advantage of playing in their own country - against either Toulouse or Northampton, who meet the previous evening. The second semi-final will pair the winners of the Stade Français-Newcastle match against the survivors of the 3 April contest between Biarritz and Munster.

This holds out the possibility of a Leicester-Munster final - very much the dream ticket for the ERC administrators, who took their reputations in their hands by awarding the showpiece occasion to Murrayfield, regardless of the fact that no Scottish side stood a snowball's chance in hell of making it through.

When Leicester and Munster met in Cardiff in the 2002 final, the Millennium Stadium was filled to capacity. Worryingly for the committee men, the prospect of a face-saving climax to the tournament depends in the first instance on both sides winning difficult last-eight ties on the road.

The Rugby Football Union announced yesterday that Argentina will replace the New Zealand Maori as the fourth team in this year's Churchill Cup competition, which takes place in Canada in June. England will send a second-tier side to compete with the hosts and the United States.