'Boring' England feeling paranoid
By CNN's Simon Hooper
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Wilkinson has been singled out for special protection.
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SPECIAL REPORT
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LONDON, England -- Just another game?
England appear to be taking Saturday's Rugby World Cup final against Australia a lot more seriously than that, with coach Clive Woodward revealing that his team's hotel had been swept for bugging devices.
Meanwhile Jonny Wilkinson, England's main weapon, is being guarded by minders in the run-up to the match, just in case anyone might be tempted to take the favorite Australian pastime of "Pommie bashing" too literally.
On paper however, Wilkinson and his teammates are already fair game, with Australia's press ganging up to disparage their oldest sporting rivals' effective but entertainment-lite style of play.
"England are killing rugby," said Queensland's Courier Mail, while the Sydney Morning Herald described Saturday's clash as "the efficient but boring British kicking machine against the born-again magic of the rampaging Wallabies."
"They're here to win and they don't care how they do it," said ex-Wallaby Russell Fairfax.
"They're killing the game with performances like Sunday's. They've played like that throughout the tournament. They are so bloody boring."
Given the media hostility to his tactics, it is perhaps not surprising that Woodward has started feeling paranoid.
Normal precautions
While denying that he thought Australian counterpart Eddie Jones was waging a deliberate espionage campaign, Woodward's concerns originate from the 2001 British and Irish Lions tour Down Under, when the Australians appeared to crack the Lions' lineout codes.
"We take our normal precautions which are professional and thorough," said Woodward.
"We have this little device and it is no bigger than a matchbox and Tony Biscombe, who is our IT man, goes round the hotel rooms and the team rooms and makes sure there are no devices.
"Sometimes people don't understand the huge stakes that we are playing for. We don't want to take any chances and we don't. It is just common sense and we have done it for a couple of years now and it is now our standard way of operating."
Woodward said that special treatment for Wilkinson, who scored all of England's points in their 24-7 semifinal over France, is also now part of "normal precautions."
"We make sure a couple of people who are on the trip with us are always around. That has been happening for the last 12 months," he said.
High-profile
"We are going to look after him when we know there are lots of people around so it's not just the World Cup. It's not just in Australia. It's no big drama. He's a high-profile sports person."
England's hopes of victory rest almost solely with the 24-year-old flyhalf, who has kicked 98 points in the tournament so far, and Wilkinson revealed on Tuesday he had been handling the pressure with the help of another English sporting hero -- football captain David Beckham.
"David Beckham has called a few times since the start of the tournament. We're mates and it's been really good to talk to him," Wilkinson wrote in his column for The Times.
"It's great to get that support from David, especially as he's obviously someone who knows what it's like to be an athlete in these sort of pressurized circumstances."
As for jibes about their playing style, it seems unlikely that Woodward will change a formula that has taken his side to the top of the world rankings and to within one game of becoming the first English side to win a major sporting title since the 1966 football World Cup.
"Whoever wins the game, however they do it, they'll be world champions on Saturday and deserving of the title," said captain Martin Johnson.
"It's about us going out there trying to impose our game on them and them trying to do the same to us and whoever does best will come out best."
