Jones, Cheika re-engage rivalry in different colours

SYDNEY : After falling to heavy defeats in their Rugby Championship openers last week, Australia and Argentina will be desperate to get their World Cup preparations back on track when they meet at Parramatta Stadium on Saturday.

The clash pitches former Randwick club mates Eddie Jones and Michael Cheika against each other in a coaching rivalry that enjoyed some incendiary moments when the former was in charge of England and the latter Australia.

Jones enjoyed very much the upper hand with England winning all seven tests, including the 40-16 thrashing of the Wallabies in the 2019 World Cup quarter-finals that brought an end to Cheika's reign as Australia coach.

Cheika got some revenge when Argentina stunned England last November and presented a chilled demeanour on Thursday when he named his team for Saturday's clash a few hundred metres from Randwick's home ground, Coogee Oval.

"I think it's a different dynamic Australia-England, to Australia-Argentina, you know what I mean?" he told reporters when asked about the rivalry.

"He's a quality coach ... the biggest thing with that is he's a competitor and he wants to win. And I'm pretty much same. We come from the same place really, down at Coogee here. So that's the one thing you're going to get all the time."

Jones, who said it was "fantastic" to have both coaches in a test match from the same club, needs to start backing up his confident talk about Australia's chances of winning the World Cup with results.

Last week's 43-12 loss to a weakened Springboks team in Pretoria was Australia's worst for more than a decade but it was the manner of their performance that was most deflating for Wallabies fans.

The return of the Quade Cooper-Samu Kerevi combination at flyhalf and inside