Saint Jude's England far from lost cause against France

The long promised quarter-final collision between two neigbouring powers is upon us. There's no question but that it feels like the biggest 'event' of the World Cup thus far.

In both the size of the occasion and the familiarity of the participants, it has the air of another of those English World Cup epics, akin to West Germany '90 or Argentina '98.

One of those games that vacuous celebrity talking heads will be reminiscing about - either mournfully or triumphantly - on trashy BBC Three listicle programmes over 20 years from now. (Dappy from N'Dubz tells the programme that no one in the pub could believe it when Kyle Walker blazed his spot kick over, but Charlotte from Naked Attraction says she'd a feeling he'd miss).

These two know each other all too well, and us them. Needless to say, the rugby crowd, in their annual meetings, lean a little harder on the war rhetoric than the football masses. Eddie Jones - much missed already in these parts - announced with relish in February 2017 that "there's been 20 wars between England and France. There's going to be another on Saturday."

The football teams encounter each other far less frequently and competitive meetings are relatively thin on the ground.

England have a positive head-to-head record against France, as they do against most nations. This is primarily a legacy of the pre-Second World War period when England won nearly every match they played but refused to enter FIFA's new-fangled World Cup racket, partly on the grounds that participation might result in their status as the greatest football nation on earth being called into question - fears which proved well founded.

England have won the two World Cup matches between the pair, dispatching their old enemies 2-0 in Wembley