The word on the suburban streets of Twickenham is that English rugby fortunes are on the up, the team's prospects as rosy as at any stage in the past seven years. It is an easy sentence to write, rather harder to justify when New Zealand are in town. If anyone can twist and buckle the sweet chariot until it resembles a heap of scrap metal, it is the ruthless sons of Aotearoa. The hosts may be improving but a big black wrecking-ball still hovers.
It is horribly simple to construct a plausible worst-case scenario for this game: a slow-starting England run headlong into an All Black side on the rebound from last week's defeat by Australia in Hong Kong, the extravagantly talented Sonny Bill Williams lives up to his billing, early injuries at centre and No8 expose the home side's modest bench cover while the French referee, Romain Poite, allows Richie McCaw total freedom. Painful? All the feel-good pre-match vibes in the world will be irrelevant if such nightmares come to pass.
This, then, is the moment for Martin Johnson's squad to demonstrate that the darkness is finally receding. This afternoon and next Saturday the best two teams in the world will be in south-west London, providing Johnson with a true measure of his team's progress. His players sense it as much as the management, openly acknowledging that a first win over the All Blacks since 2003 is overdue. "I think it has been too long," Nick Easter said after England had completed their preparations on a rainy morning today.
"They're the best side in the world but Australia beat them last week, South Africa beat them three times a year ago and France beat them more regularly than any other northern hemisphere side. That's a record we certainly want to put straight. They're only human. At the moment they're the number one side in the world and they've been setting the standards. But it's towards the end of their season while we're fresh and raring to go. We've been rested, they've had to fly over here. We can't sit back, we've got to start stretching them from the off and get them thinking whether they can cope with how we're going to play. You've got to earn the right to win any game, whoever you're playing."
Both Easter and Johnson already reckon a mental gear-change has taken place. Since the dismal, kick-heavy draw in Scotland last March, England have performed brightly in Paris and beaten the Wallabies in Sydney. The penny seems to have dropped, for all Mike Ford's old-school utterances in midweek, that the way forward lies in being bold – as much as weather and commonsense allow – rather than in safety-first orthodoxy. "Before the French game last year we said: 'Let's wake up and smell the roses here, we've got to commit to playing rugby,'" said Easter. "We probably have been predictable at stages in the past. If you are, you're an easy side to play against."
Changes in personnel have also done no harm. Chris Ashton, Ben Youngs, Toby Flood and Ben Foden have all added a dash of colour to the previously monochrome landscape. Then there is the 21-year-old Courtney Lawes. Only the other day the now retired England prop Phil Vickery wondered aloud if people quite appreciated the special nature of the talent waiting in the Twickenham wings: "He's still a baby. When he grows into that frame he's going to be an absolute monster, someone who could potentially take on anyone on the world stage. That's not arrogant, that's just what I see." Those who watched Northampton take Wasps apart last month will surely agree with Vickery.
Add all this together and it is indeed possible to sense something stirring. The average age of the England starting XV today is just over 27, virtually identical to their opponents'. In terms of caps there remains a sizeable gap – 380 compared with 644, an average per man of 25 against 43 – but England still have another 12 games before the World Cup. If they keep this team together – results will obviously play a part – they could be closer to 40 caps per man, not a million miles behind the All Blacks when crunch time arrives.
This game, therefore, is as much about proving to the faithful, and themselves, that they retain the courage of their convictions. Hiding behind a big set piece and a tight defence will be insufficient in itself, with Dan Carter having averaged almost 19 points per game in his eight Tests against England. "The game has changed and we've had to change with it," acknowledged Johnson. "Will we be better at the end of the series? Undoubtedly. But we've got to be pretty good tomorrow otherwise it's going to be a long day." As the former World Cup-winning captain is fully aware, there remains no such thing as a poor All Black side.
England: Foden (Northampton); Ashton (Northampton), Tindall (Gloucester), Hape (Bath), Cueto (Sale Sharks); Flood (Leicester), Youngs (Leicester); Sheridan (Sale Sharks), Thompson (Leeds), Cole (Leicester), Lawes (Northampton), Palmer (Stade Francais), Croft (Leicester), Moody (Bath, capt), Easter (Harlequins).
Replacements: Hartley (Northampton), Wilson (Bath), Attwood (Gloucester), Fourie (Leeds), Care (Harlequins), Hodgson (Sale), D Armitage (London Irish).
New Zealand: Muliaina (Waikato); Rokocoko (Auckland), Williams (Canterbury), Nonu (Wellington), Gear (Wellington); Carter (Canterbury), Mathewson (Wellington); Woodcock (North Harbour), Mealamu (Auckland), O Franks (Canterbury), Thorn (Canterbury), Whitelock (Canterbury), J Kaino (Auckland), McCaw (Canterbury, capt), K Read (Canterbury).
Replacements: H Elliot (Hawke's Bay), B Franks (Tasman), A Boric (North Harbour), L Messam (Waikato), A Ellis (Canterbury), S Donald (Waikato), I Toeava (Auckland).
Referee: R Poite (France).
