Signs are encouraging for an improving squad to invoke the glory of 2003 with rivals facing trickier routes in Australia
As the Ashes have reminded us, it never pays to get too excited in advance about winning in Australia. But once the draw for the 2027 men’s Rugby World Cup had concluded and the various knockout permutations had been crunched there was a strong whiff of deja vu in the Sydney air. A World Cup down under and a decent draw for England? What could possibly go wrong?
The organisers had already stoked the narrative nicely by wheeling out Jonny Wilkinson in the promotional tournament video, essentially a mashup of Mad Max and Wacky Races roaring across a dusty outback. When every Australian wakes up on Thursday to discover it is 666 days until the 2027 edition kicks off, the nagging fear of nightmarish history repeating itself will further intensify.
The cards have certainly fallen more kindly for England than for several of their rivals. While they are lurking in one of the shallower of the six pools – Wales, Tonga and Zimbabwe – the opening fixture of the tournament, in Perth on 1 October, may well thrust together the Wallabies and the All Blacks from minute one. The reward for the winners? A possible place in the same side of the knockout draw as the defending champions, South Africa, and France.
