Chiropractor appointment is sure to hurt

"You see, when he really nails someone, you almost hear the vertebrae go click, click, click," is the helpful, wince-inducing translation by Samoa's assistant coach, former All Blacks legend Michael Jones. "He knocks them skew with his first tackle and straightens them out with the next."

"Yes, we know all about them," smiled Lewsey. "People sometimes look at the results and perhaps don't realise how physical the game has become at this level, even against teams like Georgia.

"These supposedly weaker teams are absolutely not makeweights. Take the Samoans: they are phenomenal athletes-great ball players and incredibly physical. If you don't go into a game like this absolutely switched on, you're going to get turned over. Just look what they did to Wales in 1991. If you don't get the basics right in your game, if it breaks up and gets loose and free flowing, they could come into their own."

Like everyone here at a World Cup beset by a profusion of one-sided contests, Lewsey finds it desperately sad that the tournament has not been able to embrace a colourful figure like the 19st, 5ft 6in hooker Leota, who says that, financially, it would cost him simply too much, about £25,000, to abandon club for country for six weeks.

"Of course, the tournament misses someone like him. The guy can hit like no other player. I've seen him make hits in rugby union, which, quite frankly, if they were made in the street, you'd be banged up for life for," grins Lewsey.

He finds it amusing that in a recent straw poll of World Cup players, Leota, as expected, polled the most votes as the game's hardest tackler, but a couple plumped for him instead. "Me against Trevor?" smiled Lewsey. "Oh, not me - there's no way on God's earth I'd run at him. It's a big compliment just to be mentioned alongside him but, to be honest, I always think I've had a pretty good game if I haven't had to make a tackle.

"Trevor is actually very, very gentle around us in training. He's told not to go full-on, otherwise you'd go through your wage bill fairly quickly just in terms of medical expenditure!"

Lewsey has no doubt where his newfound reputation comes from. One murderous challenge on Aussie Mat Rogers, which left him feeling as if he couldn't breathe, was portrayed as a symbol of England's historic Melbourne win.

"It may or may not have given me a reputation but I'm not bothered, to be honest," reckoned Lewsey. "People tended to forget that the week before Tana Umaga (the New Zealand centre) had hit me exactly the same and knocked the stuffing out of me."

One last word of warning. Lima scored his third try of the tournament when the Samoans hammered Georgia on Sunday and will make a 15th consecutive World Cup appearance, a world record for any country, this Sunday.

On Monday, though, at least Lewsey should be able to afford himself the pleasure of waking up pain-free, for this may have been the right game to be offered a night off by Clive Woodward.