Wednesday 26 November 2014 10:49, UK
If England are to have any chance of launching a successful assault on the Everest that is next year's World Cup, then the widespread feeling seems to be that they simply have to win their next two games.
Beat Australia this weekend, then Wales at the start of the Six Nations campaign and England will have reached base-camp. Why? Because these are their two main rivals in an extremely tough-looking World Cup pool.
Unfortunately for Stuart Lancaster, both these matches are eminently lose-able. Australia might have gone down in Paris and Dublin, but they remain a potent force in world rugby. Their pack will probably never dominate any of the top sides at scrum-time, but these days they comfortably manage to hold their own. Then there are their backs. Stellar doesn't begin to describe these performers. Any side that can afford to leave Will Genia, Quade Cooper and Kurtley Beale on the bench have got to have some pretty special guys making the starting line-up. If the forwards can (and they invariably do) manage to generate quick ball at Twickenham, then the Wallabies have the sort of backs that can cook up a victory, even if fed mere starvation rations of possession. A bit like turning bush-tucker kangaroo-privates into filet mignon. And they simply love beating the Poms.
If England do come second on Saturday, then after a long bleak joyless winter, they will be under all sorts of pressure as they head down the M4 for a meeting with Wales, on a Friday night, under the roof of the most atmospheric stadium anywhere in the rugby world. It's a fixture that has "banana skin" written all over it.
In 2003, England were comfortably the best side on the planet and clear favourites to lift the Webb-Ellis trophy. They went on to live up to expectations. Heading in to 2015 things feel very different. Were England to win next year's World Cup, even with home advantage, I think it's fair to say that they would be seen as having exceeded expectations.
Not all doom and gloom
But England fans despair ye not. The last two World Cups would suggest that form can have little or no bearing on the eventual outcome. In 2011, France lost twice in the group stages but still managed to reach the final. On the day itself, Francois Trinh-Duc fluffed a penalty that would have given Les Bleus a victory they deserved on the balance of play.
Four years earlier, Brian Ashton's England shipped more than fifty points twice on their summer tour to South Africa, before losing 36-0 to the Springboks in their World Cup group, on the way to a final they too came close to winning.
In summary then, Stuart Lancaster would much prefer it if England, inspired by George Ford and with front-liners recalled from the bench, were to beat Australia this weekend and score more tries than them. Then follow this up with an impressive win in Cardiff in February. He'd certainly get less grief from the media if this was to happen. But if it doesn't, don't forget there are other routes and other methods of clambering up the treacherous slopes of rugby's Mount Everest.
Watch England v Australia live on Sky Sports 2 at 2.30pm on Saturday.
