Woodward's squad given a security lesson

England's 30-strong World Cup squad have been given a security briefing on the eve of tomorrow's departure for Australia to ensure their personal safety during the tournament.

Security consultants addressed Clive Woodward's squad at the team hotel on matters including dealing with large crowds and being aware of potential problems while in Australia.

This has become standard practice for major tours and the high-profile nature of the World Cup has ensured the players are being made aware of all potential dangers.

The question of security at training grounds was not included in the briefing. There have been claims that teams taking in the Tri-Nations tournament "spied" on each other's training sessions and fears have been raised over similar incidents at the World Cup.

England will not be policing their training sessions as a system is already in place involving official Rugby World Cup security staff.

An RFU spokesman said: "The briefing the players had was pretty standard stuff, very broad-based and to suggest that it had anything to do with spying at training grounds would be to take it out of context.