England v South Africa: the key clashes

Players and coaches hate history. It has, they say, no relevance to what they are trying to achieve in the present - Robbie Deans disregards it altogether and look how well his Australia side fared at Twickenham a week ago - yet the bare statistics have their uses as motivational tools.

For example, between 2000 and 2006, England beat South Africa in seven successive matches, beginning with a game at altitude in Bloemfontein. Against that, the Springboks have won the past five matches between the countries, among them last year's World Cup final and the last meeting at Twickenham, in 2006, which spelt doom for Andy Robinson's career as England head coach.

This is a sequence they would love to sustain at Twickenham today, the third leg of the Investec Challenge Series. Of the Springboks who take the field, six have a win at Twickenham on their CV, a group that does not include such renowned players as Victor Matfield or Schalk Burger. “The nice thing is that we are playing England in the last game; that was the big game before we came over,” Matfield said, with more than a hint of steel.

The Bulls lock will be 32 when the Lions arrive in his country next summer and has achieved all that one man can decently achieve in a sporting career - except beating England on their own turf and playing against the Lions. If he can tick one of those boxes today, it will also complete a reasonable, if not entirely consistent, season for South Africa and send them into a new year full of optimism that they can succeed against the Lions where their 1997 predecessors failed.

So whether Peter de Villiers, their head coach, genuinely believes that he and his players are hanging on by willpower alone, after the long and arduous year that has followed the winning of the World Cup, the Springboks will need little priming. They have had to patch up their front row and have lost the influential Juan Smith from their back row and one of the players of the World Cup in Fourie du Preez, the scrum half, but they will be as hard to beat as ever.

Some pundits would make England favourites today, merely because they are at home. The theory holds little water, so far removed are these players from being the finished product, but they can win if they have absorbed where they went wrong against Australia. Lack of patience, overeagerness, the concession of unnecessary penalties; all are areas that can be fixed.

What England have yet to acquire is self-confidence and that comes only with successive victories. It took Clive Woodward's team time to acquire but one of the steps towards doing so was their win over South Africa in 1998, which brought to a halt their opponents' world record-equalling run of 17 consecutive international wins.

“That was our first southern-hemisphere win for three years, the first under Clive,” Martin Johnson, the team manager, who played in that game under the captaincy of Lawrence Dallaglio, said yesterday, “although we weren't a particularly young side.” Meaning that today's XV is, but there have been sufficient splashes of colour over the past fortnight to suggest that, if England get to grips with the basics, they could stretch a stingy South Africa defence.

To do that they will have to scrummage better and hold their own at the lineout, where South Africa have held the whip hand in recent games. Nick Easter, the No8, believes that the Springboks' back five is better than any other unit in the world and that the insertion of Danie Rossouw for the injured Smith scarcely weakens them, although Rossouw has not played much rugby this month.

England's forwards must buy precious time for their half backs to run the game more effectively than they did a week ago. Danny Care can snipe more, Danny Cipriani can direct his tactical kicks with greater authority and Riki Flutey, who did all that one man could to turn the tide against Australia, may be able to finish what he starts, but nothing will happen unless England learn to support the ball carrier. How often is a New Zealander isolated in the way England's runners were? And if it is the world champions today, then it is the All Blacks, the best team in the world, next weekend.