Thompson enjoying a bit of R&R

The French appear to have turned pre-match relaxation into an art form here - is this the only rugby team in history to fire themselves up into a peak of controlled fury by listening to Cat Stevens crooning Morning Has Broken? - so the common perception is that their English opponents must be stiff-lipped, tension-ridden wrecks in comparison.

Steve Thompson begs to differ. The England hooker invites you to look around the team's hotel at Manly, see the lads having a laugh and recognise that this is not a team on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown.

Yet the rumours and the whispers never stop swirling around Thompson and Co. One report in a newspaper here this week said Jonny Wilkinson had stormed out of dinner after a row with team- mates, a claim which seems to have mystified the camp. Another flyer was that Lawrence Dallaglio was going to be dropped. The English, apparently, were also models of paranoia trying to clear imaginary spies from a training session at the Telstra Stadium.

French lock Jerome Thion said: "The English complain when people say they don't like them but talk to Australian people. I don't think they have much love for the Poms. Maybe they will support us on Sunday." You can bank on it.

Ever felt friendless? Thompson, still a relative new boy in the most experienced international side to take to a rugby field but one who already sounds as if he's seen it all, spies no end to all this Pom baiting. "I reckon that even if we actually won the World Cup, there'd still be someone ready to jump on the bandwagon and criticise us," he said.

"Tension? We've actually been very relaxed and haven't felt stressed out. There's always criticism. We came here in the summer, won, scored three tries here but we were still supposed to be boring. We beat Australia but, no, still we weren't an exciting team and people reckoned we'd never win anything because we were chokers.