1. It's england V Australia. At wembley. WEMBLEY. This is a great occasion, and one our players will rise to. I don't have stats on our record v australia at wembley but i can remember some tremendous tussles and it's almost always a fiery contest. This is the first time our national team has played at wembley in...what..... about 15 years?



2. This is one of the first times I can remember england having a proper warm up and having a settled team going into a game against australia for the first time in a tournament.



3. It's not a decider or a final. England often pull off an odd victory and wembley is the perfect setting.



4. Strike players. Widdop, tomkins, hall, chase. England have more strike and pace in these positions than they have done for a long time.



5. Winning. There is a strong focus on winning within the camp. Mcnamara just came right out and said it. In the past it's been about performance.



Australia think they're the nuts but they haven't won the recent tournaments, the kiwis have, and we don't have a bad record against the kiwis over here.



We can beat australia and we can win the tournament.

One thing that worries me is that the Kangapoos have playes the Kiwis twice in the lead up to the game, and we've played France and Wales. We could be undercooked. The forwards need to go up about 3 gears that's for sure.

They way I often assess a likely result is very simply to pass my judgement on who is the better individual on each side in each position (ie 1 to 13 or 17). Whoever scores the most "bests" usually wins and ease or closeness of victory often reflects the relative numbers of "bests".

I though we looked very good when we were attacking thier line with dummer-runners and Tomkins coming into the line superbly. I really hope we play Widdop from the start and have Carvell on the bench in place of Wilkin. Other than that we looked good against Wales, but i do think we need to alter things slightly. It wasn't a perfect performance, but we showed some encouraging signs.



Hopefully the occasion will lift the players.

Think Australia will beat us if I'm honest

By more or less than 40 points?

Less, I've gone for 36-14

We have a winning record at Wembley... 4 wins, 3 losses IIRC.



Wins in 1973, 1990, and 1994 as GB but we lost each series 2-1.



A win and a loss there as England in the 1995 World Cup... we lost the one that really counted, the World Cup Final.



A loss in 1992 as GB in the World Cup Final.



A loss in 1997 as GB against Super League Australia (The ARL doesn't recognise that series in it's records for obvious reasons). We lost the series 2-1.

The only time I've seen us beat Australia live in all the years I've been watching the game was Wembley 1990(where Paul Eastwood seemed to take about 10 minutes to line up a goal kick), so perhaps we'll do it next Saturday

Peacock needs to up his game for sure.



We have a chance though I reckon



Naively.

Take a look at the try Wales scored against us. It was nothing more than simply passing along the line, with perhaps one dummy runner. And it was too much for our defence to handle. That's why we'll lose to the Aussies, as they'll be running far more complex plays than that, and our defence is nowhere near good enough.

You clearly don't get to enough internationals!