Woodward building up to Hodgson choice

Thirty players missing: some under the surgeon's knife, others under the Mediterranean sun, most simply under the bedclothes, recovering from the most sadistically prolonged domestic season on record. All things considered, there is no obvious reason why England's two-match visit to Argentina should be seen as anything other than a waste of time, money and effort. There are one or two less than obvious reasons though, and one of them goes by the name of Charlie Hodgson.

Of the people with something immediate to gain from this tour – the rejuvenated Gloucester scrum-half Andy Gomarsall, the fast-developing Northampton prop Robbie Morris and, maybe, the London Irish centre Geoff Appleford fall into this category – Hodgson has treasure at his fingertips. Clive Woodward, the England manager and an OBE to boot, is a major-league believer in the Sale stand-off's ability to press the right buttons at international level, and is intrigued by the prospect of Hodgson and Jonny Wilkinson joining hands in holy midfield matrimony at next year's World Cup. Hodgson in the No 10 shirt, Wilkinson at inside- centre? Do not bet against it.

Listen to Woodward, speaking at the end of a hard week's training in downtown Buenos Aires, in preparation for tomorrow night's match with Argentina A and, more importantly, next Saturday's one-off Test with Lisandro Arbizu's confident and accomplished Pumas. "The chance to watch Hodgson playing stand-off at this level pretty much makes the whole trip worthwhile," he said. "Wilkinson is our first-choice outside-half, but we know everything there is to know about him – and one of the things we know is that he is a Test-class centre. What we need to find out now is whether Hodgson is a Test-class stand-off. It is one of the main reasons why we were determined to tour somewhere this summer, when we might easily have stayed home, put our feet up and watched the football on the telly."

Hodgson will be well and truly tested at the Velez Sarsfeld Stadium next Saturday. While England are likely to field four first-choice Six Nations forwards – Phil Vickery and Steve Thompson in the front row, Ben Kay in the engine room, and Lewis Moody at flanker, provided his dodgy shoulder behaves itself – they cannot expect to achieve parity against an Argentinian pack of the highest quality.

It follows, then, that Woodward's latest golden boy will be forced to run the game off his back foot, rather than his front one. That is a tough call at the best of times. When you are up against an opponent as capable as Felipe Contepomi, it is asking an awful lot.

But if Hodgson comes up smelling of red roses, Woodward will not hesitate to run him in at least one of the autumn internationals at Twickenham – New Zealand, Australia and South Africa are the half-decent visitors – with a view to building a World Cup game-plan around a new, thoroughly modern Hodgson-Wilkinson axis.

It would give England the widest possible range of kicking options – Hodgson is a right-footer, Wilkinson a two-footed genius with a preference for the left peg – and maximise the potential points of attack with ball in hand. Hodgson is a more threatening runner than Wilkinson, but the latter has shown a marked improvement in this since last summer's Lions tour.

Woodward insists he has yet to finalise his team to face the Pumas, but the indications are as clear as crystal. He always intended to give each of his 30 tourists a start on this trip, so it does not take an astrophysicist to work out that those who confront the Argentinian second-string at the Buenos Aires Cricket and Rugby Club tomorrow evening will miss the fun and games at Velez Sarsfeld.

This is bad news for the excellent Sale wing Mark Cueto, whose strength in contact and appetite for work made him one of the discoveries of the Premiership campaign. By the same yardstick, his wing rival from Bristol, Phil Christophers, is nicely on course for a first cap.

Christophers is an intelligent rugby player so he is probably bright enough to realise that England will be lucky to escape South America with two narrow defeats. Not that Woodward sees it that way, of course. "We'll see how weak this England team is when we play the Test," he snapped, in reply to a suggestion that this is his most vulnerable side since the 1998 "tour to hell". "I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think we could beat the Pumas, and I'm confident we can do a job." Over to you, young Master Hodgson.

England (v Argentina A, tomorrow): T Beim (Gloucester); D Rees (Bristol), T May (Newcastle), K Sorrell (Saracens), M Cueto (Sale); D Walder (Newcastle), N Walshe (Sale); T Woodman (Gloucester), M Regan (Bath), R Morris (Northampton), R Fidler (Gloucester), H Vyvyan (Newcastle, capt), A Balding (Leicester), D Danaher (London Irish), P Anglesea (Sale). Replacements: S Thompson (Northampton), D Flatman (Saracens), A Codling (Harlequins), A Sanderson (Sale), A Gomarsall (Gloucester), C Hodgson (Sale), T Stimpson (Leicester).