England captain Lewis Moody has been ruled out of the World Cup opener against Argentina on Saturday.
The 33-year-old flanker has failed to recover from a knee injury in time for the match in Dunedin.
Moody initially suffered a knee ligament injury in January playing for Bath against Aironi in the Heineken Cup - and subsequently missed all of the RBS Six Nations.
And although he battled his way back to full fitness, Moody suffered a recurrence of the problem in England's World Cup warm-up game against Wales at Twickenham on August 6.
"Lewis won't play at the weekend," said England manager Martin Johnson.
"He is not quite ready to go today. We hoped he would be fit to start training but he is not quite there.
Happy
"The medics and the fitness guys take him through a progression of training and we hoped it would all be ready to go today but he is just a little bit short."
Mike Tindall is likely to skipper the side in Moody's absence, having filled in during the warm-up games against Wales and Ireland, while James Haskell appears to the logical choice to start at openside against the Pumas.
"We are very happy with the other guys so it is a very simple decision to hold him back another week," said Johnson.
"It is the opening game of what hopefully is a long tournament so you can force these things sometimes and that can go either way."
Johnson remains confident Moody will still play a significant role in the tournament.
"He has been running around today so he is not a million miles away," Johnson added.
"It is just one of those calls, 'are you ready to participate fully this week and play a Test match this Saturday?' Not quite."
