THERE is a sense of irony about tonight's 2003 world cup final rematch in Marseilles. The clash four years ago was the last meaningful occasion where either team presented their best starting XV's.

On that day the Wallabies tried to win using their backs and England were trying to win using their forwards.

Four years on and the Wallabies are going to try to win through their pack and recent history would suggest that England might try and do it through their backline.

A fascinating persona swap appears to have taken place and it could be dangerous.

England lost the RWC final in 1991 by playing a brand of rugby they were unfamiliar with. There is a moral here and I think it applies to tonight's quarter-final.

The defending champions have spent the last three years and 11 months trying to play some sort of expansive game that has neither worked nor looked comfortable.

Their players are used to one or two phase rugby and are very good at it. Field position and abrasive play are standard fare. Despite their obvious grounding in this type of rugby there has been a compulsion, probably associated with being world champions, that they need to do more.

Winning regularly and against the best teams was not enough. It has for them been about the entertainment and the colour. In the pursuit of this new game style the parts of the game they are good at have actually suffered. Sound familiar?

This might seem a bit simplistic but there has been a serious mindset adjustment in both camps in recent years as both teams have been trying to get better at what they were not that good at.

My interest in tonight's game is whether this change management has become an obsession.

If the Wallabies, hell bent on revenge for 2003 and 2005, spend a serious amount of time fixing their weaknesses such that they can scrum, kick and drop goal with the best them, then we should be happy.

There is enough evidence that there has been a serious improvement in attitude and technical execution to allow this to happen. Understand, however, that improving all these elements and giving them focus has a cause and effect relationship.

There is a finite time that players and staff can spend on the field training. A complex but interesting part of rugby is that a coach must decide not only what they are going to train for but what they are going to leave out.

The net result is that your game changes because you will focus on what you practice because this is important

Eddie Jones had a very large playbook. One that needed training time to understand, let alone execute.

It produced 43 tries in the 2003 RWC and the current Wallabies will need 13 more tries in the next three games to better this tally.

England scored 36 tries last time round and this is almost half of all the tries they have scored in the history of the tournament.

Australia is the second highest try scoring country in RWC history behind the All Blacks and this has been a significant factor in our continued success.

We have renewed our focus on set piece and there is now a legitimate argument that we are now spend less of our 80 minutes playing traditional Wallaby rugby and more of our game time playing combative rugby.

Whether this will have an impact on our try scoring ability in the big games remains to be seen. We will be more aggressive and competitive, what we get from this gain is still unmeasured.

We have only played four full strength opponents this year for a 2:2 record.

England are worse but they have an advantage as it will be easier for them to go back to their playing roots than it will be for the Australia.

I'm not convinced that the English know how to beat these Wallabies. Perhaps sticking to what you know might be a good start.

The approaches might be dangerous but maybe that's what it takes to win in France this time around.