Graphic: England's road to Paris

As part of a wonderful weekend, I spent last Saturday evening in Avignon as England and France fans mingled happily and celebrated their quarter-final successes together. The camaraderie was fantastic - and I could never have imagined standing with thousands of France fans screaming “Allez les Bleus!” into the early hours - but now we are in fierce opposition and normal relationships have quickly returned.

The first thing that springs to mind, and taking nothing away from a terrific England performance, is that the hosts cannot possibly play as badly as Australia did in losing in Marseilles.

England played so very well, and they deserve plenty of credit for that, but I could not believe how poorly Australia performed in the key aspects of the game. They were torn to pieces in the rucks and nearly all the contact areas.

International rugby is tough, brutal even, at times violent, and Australia arrived with the idea of putting on a show. They were putting three, sometimes four players into the ruck on their own possession, which you can get away with if you are moving the ball extremely quickly. It is a pretty common tactic in Tri-Nations matches and Super 14 rugby in the southern hemisphere. You simply cannot get away with this tactic against teams as powerful as England and France.

On this occasion Australia were slow and I can still see George Gregan just standing there showboating - waving his hands about to get the next phase organised and not getting the ball away quickly. It gave England every opportunity for turnovers by piling in with five or six massive forwards and, crucially, it gave our forwards the opportunity to hurt them. How the big guys seized their chance.

There was head on head, knee on head, you name it. They were marmalising them at close quarters. There was real pain on the faces of those Australia forwards after five or ten minutes, which is when I turned to one of my friends in the stands and said: “England will win this.”

Australia needed to change their tactics quickly, but it did not happen. Gregan was not producing quick ball and the forwards remained ponderous. It was dull rugby, precisely what can happen if you have two front-row forwards leading the coaching team, which has been the case with Australia. The approach that John Connolly used demonstrated a lack of respect for the potential power of the England forwards and an assumption that England would just arrive at rucks and wait for Australia to play.

France are too tough and shrewd to make the same mistake and I cannot believe that they will allow themselves to be ambushed up front in the same way. In fact, the opposite will happen; they will not back down from the physical confrontation and you will not get a mismatch such as Andrew Sheridan's demolition of the Australia pack. Sheridan had a great quarter-final, but France will regard him as just another strong prop rather than Superman. Sheridan's two man-of-the-match performances have come against Australia. How he goes against France is worth the trip to Paris alone.

Raphaël Ibañez, the France captain, knows all about the England guys from playing for London Wasps and I think there is far less chance of either side being caught by surprise. England must think about other ways to win. They did some quick taps at the 22 drop-outs and they will need to maintain that variation in all aspects of their play.

They will need to run with the ball and there are encouraging signs in the partnership of Mike Catt and Jonny Wilkinson, while Paul Sackey has put some real gas into the back line. The use of the dropped goal again will be critical and it is so important that the scoreboard keeps ticking over in England's favour. Wilkinson landed three dropped goals in the semi-final four years ago. Expect the same.

It is a genuine 50-50 game and for England it is nice knowing that whatever happens they have surpassed just about everybody's expectations. They were ranked No7 in the world at the start and looked unlikely to reach the last four when they were blown away by South Africa only a month ago.

On home turf, France carry a huge weight of expectation and they will remember losing to England at this stage four years ago. I remember a strange build-up with an inordinate amount of discussion about wives and girlfriends. We had taken them with us Down Under, considered them part of the team, but France had not and some people seemed to think that it would make a difference. If England had lost four years ago, heaven knows what the headlines would have been.

A more telling factor was the emotion around the France camp caused by the imminent retirement of Fabien Galthié, their captain. Every game was potentially his last.

It was precisely the situation I had sought to avoid when I told the England players that if any of them announced that they were quitting I would not pick them. Again, the players understood the reasoning and nobody broke ranks. World Cups are not retirement parties. There was enough talk about Dad's Army without fuelling it.

New Zealand fell into this trap, with players being distracted after signing contracts to play abroad. In their minds they had already won the cup and their thoughts of arriving in European club rugby with a winners' medal around their necks must have been appealing.

This time it is Bernard Laporte, the France coach, who is preparing for the exit and while I have a lot of time for Bernard and do not doubt that he will be effective as Junior Sports Minister, I would have avoided talk about the future until after the tournament. For Bernard, who has been coaching France since 1999, his reputation is on the line and that is real pressure.

Thinking back to that match against France in Sydney, my outstanding memory of that victory is of Martin Johnson shaking Galthié's hand and then stomping straight off the pitch. Job done, get showered, bring on the final.

It was exactly the lead I wanted from our captain and if one part of Saturday's victory against Australia did make me uncomfortable, it was what happened after the final whistle. There was a lot of on-pitch celebration. The players seemed to be sucked into it by the Australians, who, as far as I could tell, were simply giving the England fans a chance to wave them off, mockingly, Down Under. Seeing the England fans singing “Cheerio, Cheerio” to our Australian friends and the Aussies waving back was one of the many amusing parts of an unforgettable day.

France and England reacted in the same way to their respective victories and it is easy to understand why, given the circumstances and earlier performances. But I would have preferred the England team to have returned to the dressing-room straight away. No big celebration, just a debrief and start to prepare for the next game. It sends a message of intent to everybody.

Both countries have named unchanged teams, which is hardly a surprise, although they have been chopping and changing at an extraordinary rate, France even more so than England. The inconsistencies in both sides make it a particularly hard game to call.

Feeling the expectation grow gives me an idea of what it must have been like four years ago because it was only when we arrived home with the trophy that we realised how rugby had gripped even non-sports fans. The excitement confirms my belief in the importance of sport and of winning these big events.

Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of the success of our national teams or any of our international sportsmen and women; the feel-good factor for the country is simply priceless.

So it is back to Paris, full of anticipation and excitement along with thousands of others. England to win by three. “Allez les Blancs!”