England look to salvage pride against Wallabies

Stuart Abbott, the Wasps centre, left Australia for home yesterday after discovering that the shoulder damage he suffered during last weekend's heavy defeat by the All Blacks at Eden Park requires surgical repair. Perhaps surprisingly, few of his colleagues could be heard muttering "lucky bugger" as he bade his fond farewells. England may be down on their uppers and out on their feet, but there is an inspiring willingness to shed every remaining bead of sweat in pursuit of a face-saving performance against the Wallabies on Saturday.

Stuart Abbott, the Wasps centre, left Australia for home yesterday after discovering that the shoulder damage he suffered during last weekend's heavy defeat by the All Blacks at Eden Park requires surgical repair. Perhaps surprisingly, few of his colleagues could be heard muttering "lucky bugger" as he bade his fond farewells. England may be down on their uppers and out on their feet, but there is an inspiring willingness to shed every remaining bead of sweat in pursuit of a face-saving performance against the Wallabies on Saturday.

In fact, there appears to be a growing conviction amongst the tourists that they might salvage something tangible from this benighted trip to rugby's southern outposts by actually winning the game, which is being billed the length and breadth of Australia as a World Cup revenge match. Clive Woodward, branded the high priest of "thugby" by the lunatic fringe of the Antipodean sporting media, was positively chipper as he looked ahead to another fixture at the superbly atmospheric Suncorp Stadium, where his side defeated Wales in the quarter-finals of last year's global tournament.

"Australia will never have a better chance to beat England, so I'll be interested to see if they take it," he said playfully, before repeating his view that the two defeats in New Zealand - 72-15 on aggregate, eight tries to nil - were not illustrative of a team in free¡fall. "I saw nothing over there to persuade me that if we were fit, fresh and raring to go with all our best players on the team sheet, we would not beat the All Blacks," he insisted. "That was a first-choice New Zealand team we faced. England, on the other hand, have gone from being a very experienced side to being very inexperienced. If you had told me last November that we would play that Test in Auckland with a back-line including [Andy] Gomarsall, [Charlie] Hodgson, [Olly] Barkley and [Tom] Voyce, I'd have asked what the hell was going on."

Ever the optimist, the coach believes the contributions of that quartet last weekend left him ahead of the game in terms of rebuilding. He is certainly more interested in the progress of this new generation of international-class players than in the constant carping of the locals over his team's aggressive approach to the forward contests in New Zealand. "You read this stuff and smile," he said. Asked whether he was offended by the suggestion that he was about to be knighted for "services to thuggery", he replied: "You'll have to ask Buckingham Palace or Downing Street about that, but I don't see myself as a great fighter. I don't think I've been in a fight in my life.

"People should look at the tape of that last game. We gave away five penalties in the whole match, which is not the sign of a team out of control. We pride ourselves on our discipline, always have. There was one bad incident involving Danny Grewcock" - the Bath lock suspended for stamping on the head of the All Black centre Daniel Carter - "and we're not condoning what he did. But I know how we prepared for the match, and it was no different to usual."

Two front-row reinforcements, the Harlequins loose-head prop, Mike Worsley, and the Wasps tight-head specialist, Will Green, arrived in Queensland yesterday after being summoned from the second-string Churchill Cup party in Canada, but Woodward was hopeful his first-choice props, Trevor Woodman and Julian White, would remain in tandem.

Woodman, who delivered a big performance in Auckland despite struggling with a dodgy shoulder, should be fit to face the Australian scrum he put to the sword on World Cup final night in Sydney.