England may have qualified for a football World Cup but the task of stitching together a team capable of winning the rugby union equivalent in 2015 still has some distance to go. It is not going to be a gentle ramble towards suburban Twickenham. Take the expectation on the shoulders of Roy Hodgson this week, stir it in with the demands of satisfying a host nation still in thrall to Jonny Wilkinson and co and you begin to get some idea of the unique pressures awaiting Stuart Lancaster and his players in two years' time.

That is partly why Lancaster has invited Hodgson to attend one of this autumn's QBE internationals, a series of games that should reveal whether last season's Six Nations collapse against Wales in Cardiff was a blip or a longer-term problem. Either way, Hodgson and Lancaster sound like men on a broadly similar wavelength, particularly when it comes to big games. If there is an oval-ball version of Andros Townsend hiding out there, Lancaster will certainly be backing him.

That may not necessarily seem the obvious conclusion to draw from England's largely predictable squad announcement at Lloyds of London on Wednesday, a place which knows all about striking a balance between risk and reward. As expected, three uncapped centres – Joel Tomkins, Henry Trinder and Luther Burrell – and the Exeter back-rower Tom Johnson have been drafted in for the injured Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and Tom Croft. Lancaster, though, made it clear he will be challenging everyone, regardless of age or experience, to aim high and abandon their comfort zones. "I don't think you'll win big games without having a mindset to attack and players who can create things," he said, looking ahead to the Australia, Argentina and New Zealand.

Rather than making sweeping personnel changes following the Millennium Stadium mauling, Lancaster is also seeking to harden minds. He wants players such as Billy Twelvetrees, set to be paired at centre against the Wallabies by either Tomkins or Trinder, to show they have matured into internationals and for more leaders to emerge in adversity than did so in Cardiff. Above all he wants calm-headed decision makers not scared to express themselves when it matters, as Hodgson's England ultimately did in their final two group games.

"Credit to the footballers for dealing with the expectation and the pressure," Lancaster said. "One of the challenges we're about to face is the expectation and pressure of being a home team at a World Cup. New Zealand faced it in 2011 and I thought they had the maturity and experience to deal with it and still deliver. Our challenge is to be ready for that. This series – three games at Twickenham against three big southern hemisphere sides – is great preparation."

It is certainly a prime opportunity for whoever of Tomkins or Trinder impresses most at training in Leeds next week. The powerful Burrell, for now, is behind them in the reckoning, with this weekend's Heineken Cup games between Saracens and Toulouse and Munster and Gloucester set to have a direct bearing as Lancaster continues to seek well-matched successors to Jeremy Guscott and Will Carling or Will Greenwood and Mike Tindall. "Ideally, Brad and Manu would be involved but who says that Henry Trinder or Joel Tomkins can't force our hand? Rarely have we promoted someone and they've not dealt with it."

There is, in that respect, a barely concealed excitement about the promise of Billy Vunipola, set to start at No8 against Australia behind his front-row brother Mako because of an injury doubt over Alex Corbisiero. Fears the Lions and Northampton prop will miss the entire autumn series have been denied but the player will be out for at least a couple of weeks after having fluid drained from knee. "He's not out of the series by any stretch of the imagination," Lancaster said. "Everyone is hoping he will be available for some, if not all, of the games."

In the short term that suggests a double dose of Vunipola trouble for the Wallabies – "As ball-carrying threats you could probably build quite a lot around them," murmured Lancaster – with Northampton's in-form Lee Dickson also pushing Ben Youngs and Danny Care for the scrum-half jersey. The captaincy announcement is due next Wednesday but Lancaster remains more concerned with the blend of his XV. "At the moment there are very few clear-cut decisions in our team. Whether it is 7,6, 8, second-row, hooker, scrum-half, we have a lot of competition for places. The priority is to get that bit right. Then you assess your leadership group and you appoint your captain on top of that."

It is collective leadership under pressure, too, that has absorbed Lancaster in the wake of the defeat by Wales. "At international level, if you're missing critical moments, they can hurt you. It's all part of your development. No team, even New Zealand, go in a straight line upwards all the time." To accelerate that maturation process, Lancaster has already undertaken a fact-finding mission to Australia and New Zealand to see what else England can learn from their southern hemisphere counterparts, with three Tests and a potential midweek game against Super 15 opposition in New Zealand planned for next June, too. Between now and then, he also aims to pick Hodgson's brains.

"Hopefully Roy and I will have a chance to chat," he said. "I've spoken to him a couple of times in the past … we'll certainly invite him to our games and hopefully he can enjoy them without worrying about the result." If nothing else, Hodgson can tell him how it feels to be the focus of a nation's scrutiny.