England coach Clive Woodward finally appears to have assembled a squad capable of matching the huge weight of national expectation placed on its shoulders.

Rugby writer Tim Wellock reports on England's chances of success Down Under.

AFTER 37 years of hurt an England team is finally poised to win another World Cup. Clive Woodward's experienced warriors are such obvious favourites for the rugby extravaganza that it might not even get interesting until the final against New Zealand in Sydney on November 22.

Of course, there's always the chance that someone will pop over five drop goals against England as happened in the quarter-final against South Africa four years ago.

Or the mercurial French will suddenly choose semi-final time again to scale their dizziest heights as they did against the All Blacks in 1999.

But no sports team has ever left these shores as well prepared as this lot and, unless some thug manages to put Jonny Wilkinson out of the competition, they ought to cope comfortably with any obstacle until they face the All Blacks.

There will be no Jonah Lomu, but memories of the destruction he has inflicted on English hopes in the past remain too vivid to discount the threat from New Zealand's new wing sensation Joe Rokocoko. He is a Fijian by birth, and it remains the great weakness of this event that the Pacific Island teams, with the remarkable talent they produce, cannot compete seriously with the three or four teams capable of winning it.

If they had the financial resources to hang on to their best players they would be a handful, as Samoa have shown in the past. But we will probably have to settle for fleeting moments of brilliance.

Fiji are in the same group as France and Scotland, which creates an outside chance of an upset. But the Scots can count themselves fortunate that they do not have to face Argentina, who are unlikely to get through against Australia and Ireland.

On recent form it will probably take home advantage to tilt the Australia v Ireland match in Melbourne on November 1. Assuming the Aussies win, the likely line-up for the quarter-finals will be: New Zealand v South Africa, Australia v Scotland, England v Wales, France v Ireland.

Even then there could be a couple of one-sided games, with only France v Ireland difficult to predict, so we have to wait until the semis on November 15 and 16 for it to get really interesting.

In four previous World Cups England have reached the final only in 1991, when they abandoned their forward-dominated tactics in the final and ran the ball with gay abandon but no success against Australia, losing 12-6. Nowadays they don't need a pre-set plan. They can respond to situations and play it any way they like because they are so well drilled and so experienced.

If he wishes, Woodward can field a team which averages more than 50 caps a man.

They were accused of never winning the big games after falling at the final hurdle in several Six Nations Grand Slam attempts. But they laid that bogey by thrashing Ireland last season and have gone beyond the fear of failure to the point where they simply won't tolerate it.

They have choices like that between Matt Dawson and Kyran Bracken at scrum half and excellent forward cover in all departments. The various permutations in the backs revolving around the versatility of Jason Robinson, Mike Catt and Iain Balshaw even allowed them to leave Austin Healey behind, and the only man for whom there is no comparable deputy is Wilkinson.

They could even withstand the loss of Martin Johnson because Dawson or Lawrence Dallaglio could easily take over the reins, but Wilkinson is the one with the potential to be the tournament's highest scorer. As long as he comes through unscathed, England should be triumphant on November 22.