JAMIE VARDY will not be involved in England’s Stadium of Light friendly with Australia on Friday – because he has been given permission to leave the national side’s training camp in order to attend his wedding in two days’ time.

Having spent the majority of the season ‘having a party’ according to the Leicester City fans, Vardy will be celebrating again this week as he marries his fiancée, Becky, with Middlesbrough striker David Nugent due to be his best man.

The striker scored his third international goal to help England claim a 2-1 win over Turkey at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, and Roy Hodgson accepts that some will question the wisdom of granting the 29-year-old the best part of a week off with the start of the European Championships now less than three weeks away.

However, with Vardy having cancelled a planned wedding last June because of his international obligations, the England boss feels it would have been unfair to ask him to put off his marriage for a second successive summer.

“He won’t be involved on Friday because he’s getting married this week,” said Hodgson. “You could say that’s unfortunate, but you must bear in mind that last year his wedding was planned for the month of June but was cancelled when he received his call-up.

“That made it more difficult for me than it might have been otherwise to complain about this date. You also have to understand that we have brought forward the time for meeting up.

“I’m sure that when he planned his wedding, he was probably thinking that he would have a week or ten days after the end of the season.

“We know Jamie and we’ve been satisfied with him. I don’t think his place in the squad is under enormous threat. And we do have other players to see that we need to look at.”

That could well mean a starting spot for Daniel Sturridge, with England’s Liverpool and Manchester United players due to link up with the squad this morning after missing today’s game because of the Europa League and FA Cup finals respectively.

There is a question mark over Marcus Rashford’s involvement, with the Manchester United striker having suffered a knee injury during his side’s FA Cup final win over Crystal Palace.

Hodgson does not know the full extent of the damage to the striker’s knee, but Rashford will surely have to start either Friday’s friendly or next week’s game with Portugal if he is to have any chance of forcing his way into the final 23-man squad for the Euros.

“The Manchester United and Liverpool players will all be with us (from today), and will be available for selection (against Australia) if fit,” said Hodgson. “We don’t know about Rashford. We believe it’s not a serious injury, but he obviously took a nasty knock so we will have to see how he is when he meets up.”

England began their three-game warm-up programme with a win, although the quality of some of their attacking was counter-balanced by some alarming defensive frailties.

Leading through Harry Kane’s third-minute strike, England conceded their lead when errors from Danny Rose and Joe Hart contributed to Hakan Calhanoglu’s side-footed equaliser.

Kane missed a penalty with 18 minutes left, but England claimed a winner when Turkey goalkeeper Volkan Babacan could only palm Gary Cahill’s header into Vardy’s path, enabling the striker to score.

“It’s always pleasing to win,” said Hodgson. “And there were some positive aspects. I thought that for large swathes of the game, we played reasonably well. But we are not the finished article and there is still work to be done.

“When you play against a team of Turkey’s qualities – and they had some good moments – it shows that the next three weeks are going to be vital to make life easier for us defensively.

“We were concerned that (Cenk) Tosun was getting his head to the ball a few too many times for our liking. That’s something we need to work on.

“We knew they were good at that, and they do have a good capacity to get that half yard and get their heads to the ball. But we will have to look to see what we can do better.”