People are putting these combinations in of centres and wingers but you are forgetting who we have in charge, it's steve mcnamara.

Hall is a certainty. He has played international for years despite being proven not good enough. McBanana will play him despite not really doing anything this season he will we base it on form in the past.

Bridge is a certainty. He has also played previously and therefore McBanana will pick him.

Briscoe will be picked and is the stand out candidate for the other wing and IMO should be playing there.

The other spot could go to anyone, I suspect Mcnamara will play Shenton there because he has played there previously
If you wanted my opinion I'd have:

Ben Jones Bishop
Kallum Watkins
Jack Reed (If Available. If not
Tom Briscoe

The basis on my selection is for the future. We arn't going to beat Aus/NZ in the 4N this year if you are being realistic. The 6th best Aus centre would get in Englands team without question. Every single one of: Greg Inglis, Michael Jennings, Michael Cooper, Jamie Lyon, Willie Tonga, Mark Gasnier (Regardless of retirement). We should be preparing for the 2013 WC but Mcnamara will pick a useless team. Full of tried and failed internationals.

Tomkins is not a Test grade Centre.
He will be targeted and be found wanting badly.

He's still better than Shenton at centre though.

I’m not too sure I buy into this club partnership argument

If the best centre and winger were coincidently from the same club it would be a nice bonus but I think we have to play the best team we can (not the best 13... i.e. don’t play people out of position)

Reading the game defensively is pretty much the same whether you play for the same team or not and I’m very sure that Briscoe and Charnley would love to play outside of centres who give them better ball in attack that Yeaman and Tomkins respectively – Yeaman is by no means a wingers centre as he holds the ball too often and, as someone has stated previously, Tomkins continuously takes Charnley’s line forcing him inside

It could easily be argued that it is more valuable to have an international half back partnership from the same club or a 9 from same club as the rest of the front row so they understand his dummy half play

All in all, I would pick the best team we can muster – again, playing people in their club positions – and expect international players to have the quality to gel as a team

Tomkins' defence at centre is pretty poor. Think he's worth a place in the 17 though.

Absolutely laughable. He's nowhere near as good. He would be a good backrower in the Lee Gilmour mould. Strong, relatively quick, but he's utterly mindless and is very poor defensively.