Hill and Charnley ready for Wales test

Correspondent

Warrington prop Chris Hill has admitted that he did not think his England call up would come this quickly. 

England’s head coach Steve McNamara rewarded Hill a place in his squad, after a superb debut season for the Wolves for the upcoming autumn internationals against Wales and France.

The two games will be focal in McNamara’s preparations for next year’s Rugby League World Cup as he will be starting to think of his final squad for the tournament.

It has been suggested that the former Leigh Centurion will start in the pack on Saturday along with several other debutants, in Leeds pair Kallum Watkins and Zak Hardaker with the latter replacing the injured Sam Tomkins at full back.

“You always want to play for your country,” said Hill. “I played under 18’s and academy level so you always want to be there. To be honest, I didn’t think it would come this quick, but a lot of that is down to the lads at Warrington and how they’ve helped me a lot through this year.

“The England camp is buzzing at the moment, we’ve come back from South Africa and there was a lot of progress and hardwork done there. 

“We are going into this game Saturday in good shape, there are a few combinations and a few new faces like myself, that’s what the camp is for and we’ve all blended in very well.

“I definitely want to be part of the final squad, like anyone else you want to be playing not just part of the squad. Ste (Steve McNamara) will pick his strongest 17 and hopefully I’m in it.”

Another of the squad, Wigan winger Josh Charnley, also hopes to be included in McNamara’s final team after being named Super League’s top try scorer this season with 31 to his name.

The 21-year-old spoke of the task ahead of them this Saturday and explained that the loss of Sam Tomkins is not as big as is perceived.

He said, “We know that Wales are going to come out heavy handed and strong, so we’ve just got to get control of that and hopefully get field position and go from there.

“I don’t the injury to Sam (Tomkins) will affect us too much, we’ve got a lot of young lads coming through and we’ve got good players in Super League.

“It will be a loss not to have Sam in the squad but there are people filtering through.”

England kick off their campaign at 2:30pm this Saturday at the Glyndwr University Racecourse Ground against Wales