Alex Walmsley's delayed England Test debut excites Tom Burgess

Tom Burgess says he is excited at the prospect of running out alongside fellow prop Alex Walmsley as the St Helens man prepares to make a belated England debut.

The 27-year-old front row forward was a late withdrawal from the team to play Australia in Friday's World Cup opening match in Melbourne after succumbing to a virus but will win his first cap against Lebanon on Saturday.

"I was gutted for him to miss out last week," said Burgess, the South Sydney prop who is from the same area of West Yorkshire as the former Batley forward and shares the same manager.

"He is such a good lad and I know him from back home. It was hard for him to miss out and he will be making up for it this week.

"He has had a couple of great years at Saints. He makes so many metres and is such a handful and I am looking forward to seeing what he can do and putting on a show for the Australian crowd."

The England team have flown to Sydney to set up camp ahead of their second Group A game and Walmsley took part in a full training session in sweltering heat at Burgess' home training ground at Redfern Oval.

"Regardless of which other players I pick, he'll definitely be in the team as he should have been there on Friday but he wasn't up to it," coach Wayne Bennett said.

Although Ryan Hall, John Bateman and Gareth Widdop all appeared to pick up slight knocks during the 90-minute training session, Bennett said he had no injury concerns other than one over Sam Burgess, Tom's older brother.

The former Bradford forward and England rugby union centre, who suffered knee medial ligament damage during Friday's 18-4 defeat by the Kangaroos, arrived at training with his knee heavily bandaged but had the strapping removed before going through some light exercises under the personal supervision of physio Dave O'Sullivan well away from the rest of the 24-man squad.

Burgess will sit out both remaining group games, against Lebanon and France, but Bennett expects his star man to be back for a potential semi-final against New Zealand in Auckland on November 25 and has not yet ruled him out of the quarter-finals.

"He is feeling good and we are pretty hopeful that we can get him back for the semi or even the quarter," Tom said. "If you said the final is this week he'd be playing."

Walmsley will take the place of Burgess but Bennett is likely to keep any further changes to a minimum after being encouraged by Friday's performance and hopes to give all 24 members of his squad a run-out before the knock-out stages.

"That's my intention but they know where they stand," he said. "I can't promise them that, but that's what I want to do.

"It would be nice for them but our job is to get results."