England wait on Sam Tomkins ahead of France clash

England are sweating on the fitness of full-back Sam Tomkins ahead of Saturday’s Test match against France at Leigh.

Head coach Steve McNamara revealed Tomkins is still struggling with the knee injury that kept him on the sidelines last season and eventually brought his National Rugby League career with the New Zealand Warriors to a premature end.

Tomkins, who has re-joined home-town club Wigan Warriors for the 2016 Super League season, trained on his own on Tuesday at England's new base at the Football Association's training ground at Burton.  

The 26-year-old's last match came almost two months ago and McNamara insists he will not rush him back, although he remains confident Tomkins will be fit for the start of the three-match Test series against New Zealand, which gets under way in Hull on November 1. 

"Sam has had an issue from the NRL season," McNamara said. 

"If Sam's fit he will be considered, if he's not we'll get him right for the week after.

"He's a strong chance of playing this week. We'll probably know a little bit more after another session on Wednesday.

"It's the same injury he had when he was at the Warriors. He needed a fair bit of attention when he came back which he's been getting. We'll continue to monitor that but I can't see there being any problems moving forward."

England captain Sean O'Loughlin also sat out Tuesday's contact session but, like Tomkins, has not yet been ruled out of Saturday's game at Leigh Sports Village.

"We've a couple of players we always manage through the week in terms of workload and people at different stages of their careers," McNamara added.

"Our performance staff are very good, they're very diligent, and managing the players is a really important part of our programme.

"We've Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday field sessions this week and Sean trained really well on yesterday. It was deemed best for him to do alternative training today, which was about contact and real physicality.

"It wasn't about shapes of running defensive patterns, so it was an opportunity for Sean to recover from yesterday's session.

"Obviously with Sam, we're protective of his knee in terms of getting done what he needs to get done to give him the best chance of playing this weekend.

"At the minute, he's doing what's right for his body.

"It's important when he's fit he's fully fit. That's most important for me. When you've got a fully-fit Sam Tomkins, you've got a pretty special player on your hands.

"We're pretty close to that happening."

McNamara will announce his 19-man squad for the match against France on Wednesday and says the nine players which featured for Leeds Rhinos and Wigan Warriors in the Super League Grand Final earlier this month will be available.

"They're always tough challenges against the French," McNamara said. "We've generally come out on the right side of them and we aim to do that this time around.

"Right from the start, we've said we've got four Test matches this year. We don't get enough international caps as a team. The way the game is set up now, it's very difficult to gain a massive amount of caps.

"We felt it was really important to make this a Test match. We're not going to play 24 players and mix and match them around."

Meanwhile, Englishman Ben Thaler and Australian Gerard Sutton have been awarded one game apiece in the Test series between England and New Zealand, with the best man getting the final match.

Thaler, who refereed the 2015 Challenge Cup final and last month's Super League Grand Final, will be in charge of game one at Hull's KC Stadium on November 1, with Sutton refereeing the second Test at London's Olympic Stadiuim on November 7.