Beating the world-beaters

'Oh, I think it does definitely provide extra incentive,' Ireland's coach Eddie O'Sullivan pondered. 'When we beat Australia at Lansdowne Road in 2002, we were driven more because Australia weren't just any team but the world champions. If we can turn over England any time in the next four years, it's going to mean the world.'

Nobody's daft enough to predict it, of course. Italy coach John Kirwan, whose boys get first crack at history on Sunday, just confides gravely: 'Right, this is the plan. We put Clive and his boys up in a hotel here in Rome that will make Fawlty Towers look like the Hilton and then on the night before the game we flood the place with 22 of the most beautiful Roman model girls you've ever seen.'

Even O'Sullivan, whose boys have the even more daunting task of winning at Twickenham, sighs: 'Personally-I don't think England will miss a beat in this Championship. I know Clive Woodward too well and I know the standards he and his players aspire to.'

Privately, though, the opposition coaches will be preaching a different line. Martin Johnson gone, Jonny Wilkinson out, Neil Back dropped, injuries aplenty, the prospect that intensity and motivational levels might have dipped since achieving the ultimate goal. Wasn't this the perfect time to tackle England?

When you're a Scot, it's always the perfect time, reckons Tommy Gemmell, another veteran of that fabled team of '67.

He remembers how England's unbeaten run then had stood at 18 games and how Alf Ramsey had resisted any Woodward-style changing of the guard. The only change from the team which had beaten West Germany in the World Cup Final nine months earlier was the recall of the fit-again Jimmy Greaves for Roger Hunt. 'That made them even stronger,' reckoned Gemmell. 'Yet, still, we won convincingly and could have scored five or six.'

In the end, the only question was over the style of victory. 'Denis and Jim started arguing on the pitch about what we should do,' smiled Gemmell. 'Denis wanted us to push on and score again; Jim just wanted us to sit back and take the piss.' A bit of both followed. Nobody will be able to take the mickey out of this England rugby team.

Gemmell presumes like the rest of us that even Kirwan's threatened combo of La Dolce Vita and Basil Fawlty couldn't stop England winning on Sunday but he does just wonder about their visit to Edinburgh the following week.

You never know. A Murrayfield downpour, a mudbath and no Johnson to direct proceedings? We've been there before back in 2000. And what about omens? In 1967, Scotland's football men had a new manager, Bobby Brown, who ended up getting chucked in the bath. Now in 2004, a soaking couldn't await their new Aussie rugby coach, Matt Williams, as well could it?

'Well, on paper it's a breeze for England, isn't it?' smiled Gemmell, an old Lisbon Lion who enjoys the odd visit to Murrayfield. 'But there's just something about England v Scotland at anything which is just that bit unpredictable...'

Only don't expect to find the sprit of Slim Jim inspiring Chris Paterson to play a suicidal version of keepy-uppy.