Scotland facing shortfall in time to prepare for the World Cup

SCOTLAND appear set to face an England team in next year's Rugby World Cup that will have had a full two months more of preparation for the tournament than their rivals north of the Border.

Rob Andrew, the former England stand-off and now the RFU's director of elite rugby, has confirmed that he will not seek to persuade Premier Rugby Limited (PRL) to release Scottish players involved with Premiership clubs before the agreed date of 4 August, next year, but, at the same time, insisted he would look to force French clubs to hand over English internationalists - namely Jonny Wilkinson, James Haskell and Tom Palmer, to Martin Johnson - at the end of this season.

The IRB's controversial regulation 9 states that players should only be released 35 days before the World Cup, which is the 4 August date, but, as part of a 110 million deal with PRL, the RFU have managed to secure the release of Premiership players from the first day in June, 2011, just days after the current season ends.

Wales coach Warren Gatland last week stated that he would consider leaving out any of his squad not released, and while Andy Robinson, the Scotland coach, would not go that far he did admit that it would be very difficult for his much larger Premiership contingent to put themselves in the frame for World Cup selection if they did not join up with the squads until August.

He, similarly, plans to bring the Scotland squad together to begin their World Cup build-up in early June, after the players have had a minimum of two weeks' holiday, and insisted that he remained hopeful that some agreement between the SRU, RFU, PRL and IRB could be reached. The PRL insist that they are merely looking after the health and welfare of their league's players, and state that allowing England's players to be released two months' earlier comes with the caveats that those players must be left out of a handful of Premiership or Heineken Cup games during the season to compensate.

Andrew said: "We have an agreement with the Premier sides to have players from the last club game until the end of the World Cup. We will have this squad of 50 available from the end of the season.

"IRB regulation 9 states a 35-day minimum, but we have nothing to do with this as we have a separate agreement between the RFU and English clubs.

"We ask our France-based players that they insert into their contracts exactly the same conditions as they would have with an English club. All the guys in the elite performance squad have assured us of this.

"Contracts are confidential between the players and their clubs, but we have undertakings between players and advisors that they have what we require."