New seats for women on council

and Scotland will need the best of him if they are to finish the autumn series with a flourish.

And while the Scots have won three of their last six Tests against the Wallabies, including that historic win in Sydney in June, Gilchrist has yet to beat them, finishing on the losing side by one point a year ago after Bernard Foley converted Tevita Kuridrani’s late try. Scotland outscored the visitors three tries to two that day and have only become more adventurous since.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll be ready for what we’re going to bring and we just have to make sure we execute it to a level better than we have ever done before,” said the lock.

“There will be no complacency [from Australia], they will have watched our games the last couple of weeks and the game in Sydney and they’ll be really well prepared and fired up. I expect them to have really high energy and high intensity in their game, so that just puts more on us. We’ve got to make sure that we have that energy and intensity and execute our game plan as well as we ever have.

“I hope it’s a good Test match. If we do everything right we want to come out with a win. The last time I played against Australia was in the autumn last year and I remember that feeling of losing out narrowly in a game that we felt we should have won, so from my point of view we want to come out on the winning side on Saturday.” England’s players have decided not to donate some of their match fee to Samoa’s players on ethical grounds.

The Samoa Rugby Union announced this month it was bankrupt, though World Rugby has since disputed this claim.

England play Samoa tomorrow at Twickenham, and Mako Vunipola suggested the England players gift £1,000 of their £22,000 match fee to Samoa players who are being paid £650.

The England players sympathised with Samoa’s plight, but opted not to make personal payments.

“The decision was made along the ethics of paying an opposition to play against you, and the future issues that might create,” said England prop Dan Cole. “It was not so much about opposition asking for pay, but the potential for the scenario of, ‘We’ve paid you before, now you owe us a favour.’ I’d love for other nations to get paid what we get paid, but it’s above our station as players.”

The RFU has promised to give £75,000 to Samoa as a goodwill gesture. World Rugby’s council will be at least one-third female from next year, the international federation has announced.

Seventeen new members will be added to the game’s highest decision-making body. This will be achieved by asking the 11 unions and six regional associations with additional votes on the council to nominate an additional representative on one condition: they must be a woman.

This will mean all the main rugby-playing nations will have three representatives and three votes, while Japan and the six regional associations have two representatives and two votes. The changes will increase the council from its current membership of 32, all of whom are men, to 49.