Our time to shine
superbly and this is our opportunity to put it all together.”
A jackpot payout of close to £7m awaits the England squad if they win today, amounting to around £225,000 per player.
A victory parade has also been booked for central London on Tuesday.
But Jones warned England must stay in the moment.
“They need to take in the excitement,” he said.
“What they don’t need to take in is the distractions. Because now everyone’s your mate. Everyone wants to have a cup of coffee or ask ‘if you got a spare ticket ,mate?’
“Blokes that weren’t your mates are now your mates, family members want tickets, long lost cousins want tickets, there’s more fans around the hotel. Every time you go out you’ve got to sign.
“You’ve got to work out what you need to do to be at your best and say no to the rest.”
Siya Kolisi, the Springboks’ first black captain, says he cannot imagine what the scenes will be like at home if South Africa win.
“It does make a huge difference and it’s big back at home,” he said. “I haven’t seen this much support since I’ve played for the team.
“The president was speaking about it in parliament, asking the whole country to wear Springbok jerseys today.
“We know how much rugby means to the country.”
OWEN FARRELL will today call his team into a huddle and tell them the strength to achieve a lifelong goal lies within the circle.
He will look into the eyes of team-mates and assure them that together they have everything required to leave Japan as champions of the world.
“We give off to each other all the confidence and belief that we need,” said the captain – who is a win away from joining Bobby Moore, Martin Johnson and Eoin Morgan in English sport’s most exclusive club.
“We’re not bothered about things that don’t really matter. We’ve got a good feel for how the group is and where the group is – and we’ll be open enough to feel what’s needed.”
Farrell’s stock-in-trade is not soundbites. Rugby is his language. Always has been. But even he could not quite mask his excitement.
“Everybody grows up wanting involved in this game,” he said.
“You think as a kid: ‘How good would it be to be involved in a World Cup Final?’ Now this opportunity has come around, you want to enjoy it, you want to go for it.
“You don’t want to dip your toe in and see what happens, you want to throw all of yourself into it. That’s the way we’ll look to go about it.”
Farrell is first among equals, the leader of a team stronger than the sum of its individual parts. There is star quality, yet this is a side even now relatively unknown.
Consider this. Tom Curry and Sam Underhill each has a claim to be player of the tournament. They even have a catchy nickname, courtesy of Eddie Jones.
Yet between them the ‘Kamikaze Kids’ have a combined Twitter following which comes up short of 15,000. Raheem Sterling alone has 2.1 million.
That is remarkable given the size of this achievement. Across Jones’ entire squad only three players – Farrell, Manu Tuilagi and Maro Itoje – have hit six figures.
It highlights the extent to which this is a truly team effort and why the unassuming Farrell, contrary to the expectation of many, has proved the perfect front man.
Ask him the secret of his captaincy success and this reluctant hero instinctively deflects praise to all corners of his squad.
“Everything that has gone into us being able to enjoy this tournament and love every minute of it, as we have, has been a form of leadership,” he said.
“That could be someone who is quiet, someone who is loud, someone who is funny, someone who is not funny. Everybody is different, everybody leads in their own way. The most important thing with this group is it is authentic, it is genuine.”
Farrell’s presence makes South Africans wary ahead of a game so important to both countries.
“Owen is very intense, very rugby orientated,” said Schalk Burger, who helped the Boks beat England to the title in 2007 before joining Farrell at to be