“I think England are in good shape”, said the 35-year-old, who retired from rugby in May after 15 years at Sale Sharks.
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The Southern Hemisphere pair have been matched up in Pool C, and they are seen as the most likely duo to book quarter-final spots.
The 51-year-old is of the opinion that several sides, including his own, have a chance of glory at this year’s World Cup: “I believe this is going to be the closest World Cup“.
“Mike Phillips has been fantastic”, Gatland said.
“We are now getting our first taste of the United Kingdom and it will be a little bit different for us because we’re in England’s pool”, Cheika said.
Ignore history, ignore culture and sentiment, it seems that the legacy of this World Cup, barring unlikely heroics by the England team, will be some nice extra rental income for Premiership football clubs.
“People get carried away by them putting 50 points on France in the last game but why didn’t they play like that the previous four games?”
Wales face an opening World Cup appointment with minnows Uruguay in Cardiff next Sunday, and a landslide win is likely to be required against comfortably the group’s weakest team before Twickenham appointments with England and Australia sandwich a Millennium Stadium encounter against Fiji.
“We train in the holidays, lunch times and after school”.
“It will come down to that game against Wales I think, and on paper you’d also rather have the squad that we do compared to theirs”.
“Everyone says it will be points that wins this pool, but it could just be defence”. “So, strengthening that area for these first three games was important”. I’d say England and Bath, those kind of teams, do that fantastically well.
– Ireland and Italy are the only tier-one nations to never have gone beyond the quarter-finals at a World Cup.
“Obviously, we are still waiting for their team selection to be made, so we can have a really good look at them”.
In 2011 OSN won the best sport production at the Broadcast Pro Awards for our coverage of the World Cup.
“There will be a lot of intensity at the start, there will be a lot of emotion inside but we must keep a cool head”.
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“You don’t have to swap like for like and if we do pick up an injury in the forwards then you may go to picking another back to replace him”.
