Rugby World Cup 2019: England plot downfall of New Zealand from Mickey Mouse hotel in Disneyland

Eddie Jones made the decision to take his side out of central Tokyo and set up base in Chiba on the Disneyland resort ahead of the World Cup semi-final showdown

England will plot the downfall of reigning world champions New Zealand from a Mickey Mouse Hotel after checking into Tokyo’s Disneyland in order to keep distractions to a minimum in semi-final week.

The squad flew from Oita back to the capital on Monday following the quarter-final victory over Australia at the weekend, where it was expected that they would check back into the Shinjuku-based hotel where they were based for the victory over Argentina earlier in the tournament.

But the hotels for the semi-finals are organised by World Rugby and four designated hotels are distributed to teams based on an out-of-the-hat seeding system, which the All Blacks ended up with the No 1 pick. England drew the second pick ahead of Wales and South Africa, meaning the two teams in Saturday’s semi-final clash in Yokohama were given priority over hotel selection.

With New Zealand favouring the centrally-based Conrad Hotel, England looked set to return to the Keio Plaza in Shinjuku, only for Eddie Jones to spring a surprise and take his team to the Tokyo Bay Hilton based in the Disneyland Resort.

Jones’s decision may have been swayed by the fact that the official England travel tour checked in hundreds of England fans into the same hotel as the squad during their last Tokyo stay, which resulted in the players being swarmed by fans eager for autographs and selfies.

“It’s always a bit different,” Jones said at the start of the week. “You’ve got to do more media, there’s more attention, there are more fans around. For the players to get from A to B it takes 10 minutes rather than five minutes, so you’ve got to be able to cope with that and find ways to get to your best. It’s a different week and it’s an exciting week.”

Jones will at least have a fully fit squad to prepare for the eagerly-anticipated clash with the three-time World Cup champions, with Jack Nowell set to return to full training on Tuesday and Jonny May winning his race to recover from a hamstring injury.

“Jonny is bouncing around this morning,” said scrum coach Neal Hatley. “He has a small twinge and we’ll assess where he is a little bit later today, but he’s in really good spirits, moving well and we also expect Jack to be fit for selection as well.

“It’s fantastic where we are, all 31 being available for selection at the end of the week.”

New Zealand meanwhile are set to be without back-row forward Matt Todd for the game after he injured the same shoulder that he previously dislocated earlier this year, although there are no fears over fellow flanker Sam Cane after coach Steve Hansen confirmed his early withdrawal at half-time in the win over Ireland was purely tactical.

"Matty Todd has hurt that shoulder again, so we'll just have to see how he goes,” Hansen said. “It's unlikely he'll be available [for the England game] but everyone else is 100 per cent. He dislocated it a wee while ago and got a bang on it yesterday, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

England are based in Disneyland ahead of their World Cup semi-final (Getty)

"Sam’s fine. We just subbed him at half-time, we wanted to bring Scotty Barrett on, it was a tactical decision. When you've got the bench we've got, the thought behind it is that we can add something different to the game and change the picture a bit. We're happy with the way it went too."