So, who is set to fly in under the radar?

REMEMBER Jean-Marc Doussain’s international debut for France? Probably not.

The poor bloke would happily forget it himself, but the art of selective amnesia takes a lifetime to master and as the multi-tasking half-back from Toulouse is still in his early 30s, he’ll be fighting off the night terrors for the foreseeable future and beyond.

A brief resume: Doussain, barely out of his teens, was given the closing four minutes off the bench against the All Blacks at Eden Park, during which he fumbled the ball at the base of a ruck with the last of his three touches and cost his countrymen one last shot at victory. Oh yes, almost forgot. This was not any old match. This was the 2011 World Cup final, which Les Bleus lost by a single, miserable point.

Lots of players make their early Test appearances off the shiny pine: far too many, according to those who include cheap caps alongside fake injuries, the jackal position, five-metre line out rumbles and the entire governing class in their lists of things rugby could well do without. But the Doussain case was over-the-edge extreme and generated widespread sympathy. Satan himself might have shed a tear.

And it could easily happen again, with the next victim being an Englishman. There are several emerging candidates in the training squad just named by Steve Borthwick and while the majority of the 33-man party for the big event will be drawn from Saracens, Sale, Leicester and Northampton, none of whom provided players for the initial pick because their club seasons ran so deep into the spring, there will probably be a left-field choice or two from the outer circle.