Watch England take on Italy in their final World Cup warm-up, live on Sky Sports Action from 7pm on Friday
Wednesday 4 September 2019 09:41, UK
England are peaking at the right time ahead of the Rugby World Cup in Japan, according to Jonny Wilkinson.
Eddie Jones' side face Italy in their final warm-up match on Friday, live on Sky Sports, and will be confident of victory after beating Ireland in a record win at Twickenham in their last match.
England also beat Six Nations champions Wales last month before narrowly losing the reverse fixture in Cardiff and Wilkinson has been impressed with their preparations for the World Cup, which begins on September 20 in Tokyo.
"They've used the pre-season brilliantly, the warm-up games," said Wilkinson. "They're almost peaking and have got momentum going in, which is great.
"Every game seems to have a real intention and objective about why they're playing it, which team they're picking and why they're picking it.
"It isn't just a case of 'Let's see if we can win a few games', it's more 'Let's go and see what we're capable of, put some stuff into practice that we've been working on in camp'.
"The guys look excited, fresh and physically ready. I think that is going to be key going in now, that they don't do too much but do enough to be in a confident state of mind come the first game."
England remain the only northern hemisphere nation to have won the World Cup, with Wilkinson famously kicking his side to victory over hosts Australia in 2003.
England could face Australia again in the quarter-finals of this year's tournament and Wilkinson has backed the current generation to go all the way if they reach the final four.
"The barrier for me was always quarter-finals," he said. "The tournament was always split into two stages - the Pool stage and the latter stages but now I feel that the quarter-final holds an interesting position.
"Two of the World Cups I was involved in we exited at the quarter-final and the others went right to the final. That is the turning point, for me anyway.
"Once you hit that semi-final stage there is a certain degree of allowing things to go the way they are. We always felt strong about semi-finals, almost like this isn't where it ends.
"But the quarter-final is that point where you come out of the group stages and people think 'this isn't enough, it's never enough', semi-final is where you think if you get there you're moving.
"I would love to see a few northern hemisphere names in that semi-final draw and certainly to see one of them in the final would be nice. If it was England I would be even happier."
