• Nick Tompkins among uncapped quartet chosen from England• ‘We are pretty excited with the group we have got’ says Pivac
Wayne Pivac has raided
England for his first Six Nations squad, naming four uncapped Premiership players among the 38 who will defend the title Wales won with the grand slam last year.
Pivac, who took over from Warren Gatland after last year’s
World Cup, was expected to call on Gloucester’s 18-year old wing Louis Rees-Zammit and the Sale prop WillGriff John, but after ordering Wales’s Exiles’s department to be more proactive in the hunt for players eligible to wear the red jersey, he has included Saracens’ in-form centre Nick Tompkins, who had been linked with an England call-up, and the Wasps second row Will Rowlands.