{"id":10289,"date":"2025-02-06T14:19:25","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T14:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/six-nations-england-pick-fly-half-fin-smith-to-face-france\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T14:19:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T14:19:25","slug":"six-nations-england-pick-fly-half-fin-smith-to-face-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/six-nations-england-pick-fly-half-fin-smith-to-face-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations: England pick fly-half Fin Smith to face France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">England <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cpvmx03n9ngo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">have confirmed an audacious fly-half switch<\/b><\/a><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\"> with Fin Smith starting at 10 and Marcus Smith shifted to full-back against France on Saturday.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fin Smith will make his first Test start after seven appearances off the bench.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His Northampton team-mate Ollie Sleightholme comes in for the injured Cadan Murley on the wing and brings the Saints contingent in the backline up to four with wing Tommy Freeman and scrum-half Alex Mitchell also starting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tom Willis is at number eight in the only other change to the starting XV, as Ben Earl moves to open-side flanker and Ben Curry drops to the bench.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former captain Jamie George returns from injury and, along with the versatile Elliot Daly, is among the replacements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Freddie Steward, who started at 15 in last weekend&#8217;s defeat by Ireland, drops out of the 23-strong matchday squad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saturday&#8217;s game starts at 16:45 GMT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c7vd9e36689o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>England have confirmed an audacious fly-half switch with Fin Smith starting at 10 and Marcus Smith shifted to full-back against France on Saturday. Fin Smith will make his first Test start after seven appearances off the bench. His Northampton team-mate Ollie Sleightholme comes in for the injured Cadan Murley on the wing and brings the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10291,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289\/revisions\/10291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}