England and Fiji desperate to seize dream opportunity

MARSEILLE, France : England and Fiji hardly charged into the World Cup quarter-finals in a blaze glory, but neither will care as they seek to grasp a glorious opportunity to progress while the sport's four best teams are forced to slug it out in Paris.

The vagaries of the draw presented a less-than-perilous route to the knockout stage for the pair and, having navigated it in contrasting ways, both can still be justifiably confident going into Sunday's clash.

In any other year England would be overwhelming favourites but, having lost to Fiji for the first time in August and then seen them bundle Australia out of the tournament, the odds have shortened - though only a little.

Fiji are playing in their third quarter-final after 1987 and 2007, while England, who have only once failed to make the last eight, are seeking a sixth semi-final appearance.

England arrive on the back of four wins, but from wildly varying performances. The opener against Argentina with 14 men for 77 minutes was a superb display, all the more so coming off the back of such a wretched August warm-up campaign.

They eventually proved too strong for Japan and then turned on the style to hammer debutantes Chile. Already assured of top spot in the pool, they were poor in scraping an 18-17 win over Samoa, but coach Steve Borthwick tried to turn that into a positive saying it was the tough test they needed after two weeks off.

Their style will not have won them any admirers and, if anything, they are likely to be even tighter on Sunday as they seek desperately to avoid being dragged into a loose, open game against the sport's most dangerous broken field runners.

Borthwick has made two major selection calls for the match - dropping George Ford, allowing Owen Farrell