Michael Cheika has warned England his maturing Australia side will be prepared for dirty tricks off the ball at Twickenham on Saturday. The head coach is backing his players to sort out problems for themselves and will not be flagging up concerns to the New Zealand referee Ben O’Keeffe before the match.



Australia were the last team to defeat England at Twickenham, convincingly so during the 2015 World Cup, but they lost four times to the men in white last year, including a 3-0 whitewash in a home Test series. Cheika was then goaded into verbal sparring with his opposite number and one of his predecessors in charge of the Wallabies, Eddie Jones, but after announcing an unchanged side he said England would not get away with impeding players off the ball this time.

“England are a big, powerful side and they will try to bully us around,” said Cheika. “They try to bully us at the scrum, the lineout and the ruck and then they niggle, trying to get into our half-back after he passes and the 10 after he passes. There is so much footage of that.

“The fact they are unified behind that strategy means we are going to have to look them in the eye and take them on if we are going to be able to resist that.”

Asked if what he said England did was legal, he replied: “If you get away with it, yes. I have not seen the referee and I will not be highlighting it to him. I’m not complaining: it is part of the game and you know it will happen when you take the ball to the line.”

The Australia No8 Sean McMahon echoed his head coach when he said: “We have focused on the way England target our half-backs. We have to make sure we protect them at attacking breakdowns by clearing out and providing clean ball.”

It was Jones who took the offensive in their jousts last year, but the England head coach was preparing to speak to the media when Cheika went on the attack, emboldened by better results in recent months, including a win over New Zealand.

Saturday’s victory over Wales was the fourth in a row for an Australia side that had previously lost to Scotland and conceded 54 points to New Zealand having last year lost all four matches against England and all three against the All Blacks.

“We have made a conscious effort to change the character profile of the players and develop a different approach to the game,” said Cheika. “We needed to make it a no-excuse culture: we are not happy to be ranked third in the world or to be punching above our weight. It is about doing everything to be the best you can and owning everything, the good and the bad.

“We are learning to be more resilient because not having resilience is a big symptom of the excuse culture. We are a work in progress having had 25 debutants since the last World Cup. We needed to build our depth and you have had to have some thick skin during that time, but you can see the camaraderie in the group. They fight hard for the small things.”

Cheika’s opposite number has straddled both sides in this fixture having coached the Wallabies in the 2000s. The Australian union was then financially secure, with the 2001 Lions tour quickly followed by the World Cup, but this decade it has spent more on the elite game, not least because of the purchasing power of clubs in France, England and Japan, at the expense of the grassroots and had to re-evaluate earlier this year.

“You have got heaps of cash over here,” said Cheika. “That is not being rude: it is true compared to what we have got. We are struggling to get a lot of things going when it comes to money, but when you have it you have still go to do something with it, which is what Eddie has done. He is using the resources wisely.”

It is a meeting between the sides that lie second and third in the world rankings, behind New Zealand. The Wallabies were second after the last World Cup but 20 victories in 21 Tests under Jones have taken his side above the Wallabies and it is another year before England play the All Blacks.

“I do not think England’s position is false because they are beating everyone else,” said Cheika. “They are not number one because they have not played the other mob and that is the only way to catch them. If you beat the third-placed team four times in a year, you should be second. The ranking system is an important piece of the puzzle: we are lucky because we play New Zealand three times a year and the more we test ourselves against them and England, the better we are going to become.

“We are a team that is still growing spiritually and mentally, learning how to be tougher. You do not make any excuses when you are tough. I really enjoy being with this team, in victory and at half-time in Sydney when we were flown to New Zealand by a big margin and they got themselves back together. When the rivalry is close as it is between England and Australia, the emotions go the full spectrum. The joy of winning is amplified as is the pain of losing. That’s why the boys are so keen to play; they are counting down the days.”

Australia team K Beale; M Koroibete, T Kuridrani, S Kerevi, R Hodge: B Foley, W Genia; S Sio, T Polota-Nau, S Kepu, R Simmons, A Coleman, N Hanigan, M Hooper (capt), S McMahon.

*Replacements S Moore, T Robertson, A Alaalatoa, M Philip, B McCalman, L Timani, N Phipps, K Hunt, H Speight.

*one to be omitted