‘The fun is over now’ – Cheika prepares for England grudge match

“We’ve reached the end of the Old Mutual Wealth Series and this Australian team certainly has the capability to ruin England’s hopes of going unbeaten for the year”.

Cheika also claimed that former Australia coach Jones had tarnished his legacy in his homeland during England’s 3-0 series victory over the Wallabies down under in June.

Should England win its first four Tests it will finish the Six Nations with a clash against Ireland – the only side to beat the All Blacks since they lifted the World Cup past year.

So why would I worry about it?

“We met with the referees in June with some of the England staff present and we’ll make a decision later in the week as to whether we do that again or not”, Larkham said.

“Jaco’s an excellent referee and he will referee the game as he sees it on Saturday, we have no doubts about that”.

Figures produced by World Rugby indicate the average length of time for a TMO referral is about 74 seconds, and there are about 2.4 referrals per game on average. In the summer Jones talked of his England side adopting a “Bodyline” approach, but on Saturday he is expecting Australia to bring their own Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee-esque fast-bowlers.

“He’s always operated with a chip on his shoulder and now that there’s not a chip because he’s going really well, he’s got to keep looking for it”.

“I don’t know if he’s bitter”.

“He’s just geeing up”.

Should England triumph at Twickenham they will extend their winning run to 14 Tests, having beaten Uruguay in October 2015 in their last World Cup match, a hollow victory given that they had already missed out on a quarter-final place after losing to Wales and Australia.

There are some supporting the Wallabies who have this optimism, given that their team is playing much better rugby than they did in the last Rugby Championship, especially the better form of flyhalf Bernard Foley and centre Tevita Kuridrani. “I’ll see how I go”.

“For us, we’ve had a good year so far but it’s not good enough, we want to finish off with our best performance of the year, so physically we believe we’re peaking, mentally we’re in a good spot so we’ve just got to put the wheels into motion on the field. He has to have a reason”.

In team news, the big story is that Billy Vunipola has been ruled out following knee surgery and is likely to be absent until the end of next year’s Six Nations, a huge loss for England, but an equally huge opportunity for his replacement to challenge for the number 8 position.

“I’m not sure we gave them a hiding then because that was genuinely a tough game”.

“He is very respected in Australia, I don’t know where that comes from, the disrespect”. “If we win this Test then we create history”. “All I thought about was getting better every day”.

“That extra weight he’s got…it’s going to be a very physical game and he’s fresh now after a couple of weeks off and ready to go”. We’re moving along that track.

“With that World Cup teams have got so long to prepare and we had three or four months of preparation together as a squad to come together and at the time it is the biggest thing you can do. They’ve had the talent all I’ve done is taught them how to play as a team, I haven’t taught them about rugby”. It’s a bit of fun and a laugh, but the time for that is over and it’s about concentrating on the match now.