Clive Woodward rubbed his hands with glee back at the Aviva Stadium, in February, and told a few of us local journalists he was looking forward to England doing a number on Ireland.
Eight months on and the former England coach has not learned his lesson.
Ireland won at a canter that day and are well placed at this World Cup after a solid start. England are on the brink of missing out on the knock-out stages after some haywire decisions cost them a win, or even a draw, against Wales.
And still, Woodward thunders on.
In his Daily Mail column, today, the World Cup-winning coach had a pop at the Wallabies intelligence. Just the ammo they need ahead of a crunch encounter.
Woodward wrote: ‘It is not a case of playing random running rugby against Australia, it’s all about attacking cleverly and with purpose.
‘It’s about never letting them off the hook. If you can keep hold of the ball and run through the phases, always moving forwards, Australia will disintegrate. Do the opposite of what they expect, move the ball quickly from the scrum, take quick line-outs, tap and go.
‘Contrary to popular belief, they are not the brightest team, they give away penalties and pick up yellow cards when they are stretched.
‘Playing at pace also applies to the scoreboard, keep it ticking. Just always score next. Target five tries and if they want to give us penalties in the process, take them too.’
As you can imagine, the Wallabies did not take that lying down.
Cheika: 'Woodward says we're not the brightest? He's right:I only got 300 out of 500 in my high-school tests. Mum wished I'd worked harder.'
— Julian Bennetts (@julian_bennetts) October 2, 2015
Cheika was not impressed with Woodward’s comments or the talk coming from England’s camp about bossing the game up front.
The Australian coach declared, “The only place things are going to be different is on the field on Saturday night and that’s where we’ve got to show our colours.
“Talk is cheap, you know.”
The Aussies blasted out ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC during today’s Captain’s Run.
“We want to put a smile on our faces,” Cheika remarked. “We want to have a bit of fun as well.”
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