Fitness willing, Woodward will surely want to give his favoured 22 a third successive outing – a move that would see the newcomers to the senior squad, including the Cardiff wing Liam Botham and the brilliant Sale loose forward Alex Sanderson, released to their various representative squads after a valuable day of Test-intensity preparation.Botham, the much-discussed son of some cricketer or other, is one of four wings in the party – six if you count Iain Balshaw and Lee Best, who can both play anywhere in the back three. But Beefy Jnr’s inclusion appears to confirm that Woodward is seriously considering him for a trip to South Africa this summer. Best, who joined Bristol earlier this season, is in the same bracket, as are the Saracens centre Ben Johnston, the Bath lock Steve Borthwick and the Northampton hooker Steve Walter.With Matt Perry fully confident of recovering from his tweaked hamstring in good time to face the Welsh, there are no serious injury concerns. Sadly, neither Scotland nor France, who meet at Murrayfield on the same day, are as blessed.

Ian McGeechan, the Scottish coach, must do without two experienced front-rowers in Gordon Bulloch and George Graham and a long serving scrum-half in Bryan Redpath, while France have ruled both Legi Matiu and, crucially, Abdel Benazzi out of contention.Chris Paterson, of Edinburgh Reivers, is the most striking addition to a Scottish squad under serious pressure to perform after embarrassing misfires against Italy and Ireland. McGeechan has done away with two threequarters, Shaun Longstaff and Graham Shiel, and may give Paterson a run at full-back, although he is equally likely to keep Glenn Metcalfe at No 15 and play the bulky James McLaren in the wide position. France, meanwhile, have called four players into a 23-man squad: two flankers in Lionel Mallier of Brive and Sebastien Chabal of Bourgoin, the Montferrand outside-half Gerald Merceron and the Bourgoin lock Jean Daude.Meanwhile, Bob Dwyer has been named as coach of a strong Barbarians outfit scheduled to play high-profile games with Ireland, Scotland and the Allied Dunbar Premiership champions between 28 May and 4 June. Jonah Lomu, Tim Horan, Christophe Dominici and Lawrence Dallaglio are among the top-of-the-bill attractions, although the Heineken Cup and Super 12 finals may interfere with the Baa-Baas’ best intentions.. Yevgeny Kafelnikov is two matches away from overtaking Andre Agassi as the leader of the ATP Champions Race 2000, mention of which is likely to give the Russian palpitations after what befell him at London’sindoor tournament last year.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov is two matches away from overtaking Andre Agassi as the leader of the ATP Champions Race 2000, mention of which is likely to give the Russian palpitations after what befell him at London’sindoor tournament last year.
Needing to defeat Thomas Johansson in the quarterfinals in order to become the world No 1, Kafelnikov lost to the Swede. To the embarrassment of the men’s game, Kafelnikov eventually reached the summit in May after being beaten in the opening round of six consecutive tournaments – a quirk of the rolling 52-week ranking system.The task now facing Kafelnikov in the $800,000 (£500,000) AXA Cup is to defeat the Frenchman Fabrice Santoro in the quarter-finals today and to account for either Britain’s Greg Rusedski or the Argentinian Mariano Zabaleta in the semi-finals tomorrow tosecure the points that would take him to the top of the table.One would expect Kafelnikov’s sense of déjà vu to be relieved by the fact that the tournament has moved to a new location in Docklands – except that he considers the court at the London Arena to be “dangerous”, describes the hotel where he is staying as “terrible; unacceptable”, and says he would prefer to be back playing in the tented accommodation in Battersea Park, “being in a civilised area.”Kafelnikov’s most disturbing complaint is about the synthetic court laid on a chipboard base over an ice rink. “I nearly twisted my ankle on the match point against [Andrei] Medvedev on Wednesday,” he said “The arena is not so bad, but the surface is horrendous It’s very bumpy, and I felt the surface move under my feet I told the umpire something has to be done about it. You don’t want to see somebody having a bad accident.”A similar surface was used for last week’s ATP Tour event in Rotterdam, where he was defeated in the semi-finals by Britain’s Tim Henman. “I think this is the worst type of surface,” Kafelnikov said.