Six Nations: Vickery and Farrell Join Wilkinson on England's Lengthening Injury List

England's captain, Phil Vickery, and centre Andy Farrell yesterday joined Brian Ashton's long list of injury doubts for Sunday's Six Nations game against France at Twickenham. After another injury-strewn Premiership weekend a quarter of Ashton's 28-man squad, including the fly-half Jonny Wilkinson, will be under the care of the England doctor, Simon Kemp, rather than the coaching team at today's training session in Bath.

Vickery suffered a hefty blow to the head playing for Wasps against Bristol yesterday and left the field looking extremely unsteady. He will have further tests today but Wasps' director of rugby, Ian McGeechan, insisted the prop was "fine". "The medics said there had been heavy contact but I'm sure he'll be OK," said McGeechan. "We'll speak to England but he recovered enough to come back out and sit on the bench."

Farrell, meanwhile, was yesterday morning ruled out of Saracens' win over Sale with a recurrence of back spasms he suffered in January. Alan Gaffney, Saracens' director of rugby, said that he expected the centre to be fit to report for England's training session in Bath today. "He's fine and he probably could have played today," said Gaffney. "He had a long drive on Friday and he became a little bit stiff as a result. He then trained fine but spent too long kicking and woke up feeling stiff. I wasn't under any pressure from England. I'm not being Mr Nice Guy: if he had been fit he would have played."

England refused to comment on their escalating fitness problems yesterday other than to say that Wilkinson, who limped out of Newcastle's defeat at London Irish on Saturday six minutes from the end with recurrent hamstring trouble, was being assessed last night by Newcastle and would be examined by Kemp today.

The Bath second-row Steve Borthwick, who picked up rib damage at Worcester on Saturday, was last night awaiting the results of a scan, with the club's head coach, Steve Meehan, saying the injury was a concern, and the Harlequins wing David Strettle sustained a dead leg at Leicester but was declared by his club not to be a doubt for Sunday.

Jason Robinson and Magnus Lund did not appear for Sale yesterday, because of neck and head injuries respectively, and the club's coach, Philippe Saint-Andre, admitted the wing's neck injury was still a concern, rating him only 50-50 to be fit for England's date with France.

The Wasps flanker Tom Rees suffered a bruised cheek during their match yesterday. In contrast the France captain, Raphael Ibanez, remained on the bench in High Wycombe for the entire game.