There were no pre-season guarantees that Martin Johnson would captain his country against the All Blacks but yesterday demonstrated once again why Clive Woodward could find no better candidate to lead England out at Twickenham this weekend.

At 32, Johnson is still playing well enough to demand selection in the second row and even New Zealanders would have been impressed by the tone of his pre-match address at the team's Surrey hotel. England, according to their skipper, will not be intimidated by anything New Zealand can summon up, the famous haka included.

On the last All Black tour of England in 1997, the rival hookers Richard Cockerill and Norm Hewitt ended up eyeball to eyeball but Johnson insists that his team have no plans to pursue anything similar this Saturday, despite the less than complimentary remarks directed their way over the past week.

Brushing aside the comments of Andrew Mehrtens and Josh Kronfeld, both of whom have hinted that the All Blacks still regard England as frequently arrogant opponents, Johnson stressed that England are more motivated these days by the lure of hard-earned victory than any potential post-match gloating.

"We haven't played them for three years and they have more mystique than anyone else in world rugby," said Johnson, aware that England have beaten their opponents only three times since the second world war. "It does give you a little bit of an edge, but in a good way.

"Sometimes they perceive us as arrogant but there's nothing we can do to change that. They got a little bit upset about the haka in 1997, which I found strange because Norm Hewitt went close to Cockers rather than the other way around. At the time, Cockers thought you were supposed to do that. But the haka's part of New Zealand culture and we'll respect it."

The formidable Johnson knows better than anyone what it feels like to pull on a black shirt, having represented New Zealand Under-21 during a stint with King Country at the start of his career. "The differences between the world's teams have diminished but the All Blacks invariably play with passion, commitment and skill. New Zealand has also always had more strength in depth than anyone else. They could probably pick three to four teams who could play international rugby."

The England captain will also be reminding his team not to get carried away with past history. "I don't look at it as a revenge thing for losing to them in 1999 and 1995. We haven't won against New Zealand since 1993 but we'd like to beat them on Saturday whether we'd won against them last year or last week.

"Because they haven't been here for a long time I think the public are very excited about this match. It's not to put down the Wallabies and the Springboks but it's good to have the All Blacks here."