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England about to face an emboldened Ireland team

Martin Johnson's loss is Lawrence Dallaglio's gain.

With Johnson retired from international rugby, Dallaglio gets the satisfaction of being the first captain to lead World Cup winner England out at Twickenham in the Six Nations championship tomorrow.

It's England's first competitive game at headquarters since Johnson's team outlasted Australia in the World Cup final in Sydney Nov. 22, and a sellout 74,000 crowd will provide its own salute as the players run out against Ireland.

Already with four points from two away games against Italy and Scotland, England now has two matches at home to Ireland and Wales. After going 22 matches at Twickenham without defeat, the odds are that Clive Woodward's team will be headed for its final game against France March 27 aiming for a second Grand Slam in a row.

Trouble is, it's likely the French will also be after the Slam and have home advantage.

The French visit Wales on Saturday after scoring two unconvincing victories over Ireland and Italy. The Italians and Scots face each other in Rome in which could well be the "wooden spoon" decider for last place.

Dallaglio is only interested in another title, however, and hopes to join Johnson as the captain of a Grand Slam winning England team.

"It's the first time you step onto the field at Twickenham as world champions and that must mean a huge amount to the players and the fans," he said. "I'm getting more and more excited by the day."

He hopes his team will be riding on a wave of patriotism.

"Clearly the atmosphere in some of the games in Australia -- particularly the last two -- was wildly patriotic and colorful and a lot different from what we were used to," he said.

"It will be interesting to see how much of that is carried over to Twickenham but I think you can expect a different atmosphere to anything any of us have ever seen before."

England is still without World Cup hero Jonny Wilkinson and Paul Grayson continues with the fly half role and kicking duties against the Irish. That will be one of the big contests of the day with Ronan O'Gara hoping to outscore Grayson with the boot.

Ireland captain Brian O'Driscoll, whose team outplayed Wales 36-15 in Dublin last time out, said his players had two great reasons to lift their game against the English.

"Our motivation is to become the first team to beat the world champions and also to stop their exceptional run at Twickenham," the British and Irish Lions center said. "They are two excellent reasons to go over to England and give it our all.

"No-one is giving us a fighting chance so all the pressure is on them. People believe our job is to keep the scoreline as low as possible and that usually works in our favor because the Irish have always done better when underdogs."

The French have dropped back row star Olivier Magne to the bench and recalled fit again Frederic Michalak for the game against the Welsh at the Millennium Stadium.

Coach Bernard Laporte replaces the experienced Magne with Thomas Lievremont to add more physical power in the back row.

"He deserves to start while Charlie [Magne], who will play at some stage in the match, knows he has not been that good with his club recently," Laporte said.

The Welsh need a lift after their poor performance in Dublin and they have not beaten the French in Cardiff in a championship match since a 16-15 victory in 1996.

But Wales won its opening game against Scotland and assistant coach Scott Johnson is upset that all the talks is of a France-England confrontation for the title.

"I'm sick of hearing about this showdown on March 27," the Australian said. "Who knows? Come next Monday morning, people might not be talking about it any more.

"We are still in this championship, and we've still got to play those two teams."

Italy's coach John Kirwan of New Zealand has surprisingly released fellow countryman Rima Wakarua from the lineup against the Scots at the Stadio Flaminio.
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