England have suffered a serious blow to their plans to beat Australia at Twickenham this afternoon, with the surprise withdrawal of their major strike runner Will Greenwood with a groin injury. The Leicester centre's place goes to the former England captain Phil de Glanville, who wins his 31st cap.

Greenwood, who scored a decisive late try in last Sunday's 23-15 win over Italy, damaged his groin during this week's intensive series of squad sessions after coming through important games for club and country without any recurrence of a long-standing shoulder injury.

Clive Woodward, the England coach, called up the 30-year-old de Glanville, who was not in the original match squad of 22, rather than promote Mike Catt or Nick Beal from the bench. "Phil is a player of proven quality at international level," Woodward said. "Obviously Will and I are disappointed, but I have no hesitation in bringing Phil into the starting line-up."

De Glanville, with whom Woodward worked closely last year during a short spell as a Bath coach, will resume his long-running midfield partnership with his club-mate Jeremy Guscott. He has recently missed Premiership matches after being overlooked in favour of Ireland's Kevin Maggs.

Scotland coach Jim Telfer yesterday backed his success-starved side to dispense with the fear factor and put Portugal to the sword in their World Cup qualifier at Murrayfield today. The SRU director of rugby was at pains to concentrate minds back to on-field matters in the wake of the turmoil caused by the damaging resignations of Andy Irvine and John Jeffrey on Thursday. Telfer insisted that the damaging political strife of the last 48 hours "hasn't affected me at all, or the players".