Fire alarm gives England early wake-up call ahead of crunch World Cup match

The shock of a pre-tournament loss to Italy was eased slightly with an encouraging performance in defeat to Australia last weekend.

But the hosts cannot contemplate a third successive reverse when they face the Irish in front of a capacity 25,000 crowd at Huddersfield.

With the threatening Fiji still to come in their last Group A fixture, Sinfield knows his overwhelming favourites must produce this afternoon. He insists they can handle the pressure.

“The group are fully concentrating on what we’ve got and what’s between our four walls,” he said, after their final training run at John Smith’s Stadium yesterday.

“Our expectation is greater than anything that anyone externally can put upon us.

“We just want to get out there and play well, perform, hopefully get the win and get this competition moving for us.

“Obviously there was a lot of focus on that Australia match but it’s not been difficult switching to Ireland.

“When you are in a tournament like this you have to switch your minds pretty quickly.

“We know how important this game and the performance is.

“Everyone is fighting for places. The squad is really strong and together and really committed to trying to do something special for England.

“But we need to get off the board now and we need to play well this week.”

The squad were raised early yesterday when a fire alarm went off at 6.30am at their Leeds hotel, England full-back Sam Tomkins posting a video in which he joked it “must be the Irish!”

However, Sinfield, 33, insisted it had no negative effect.

“It’s just part of the challenge of being in hotels and being together,” said the Leeds Rhinos captain.

“It was the smallest disruption, everyone went back to bed for an hour and the lads saw the funny side.

“They have just trained great there, probably as well as they’ve trained for the last couple of weeks.”

Today’s game is the first meeting between the sides since a World Cup quarter-final at Headingley in 2000.

England eventually triumphed 26-16 but only after fighting back when Ireland took the lead.

Sinfield was an unused member of the England squad 13 years ago but recollects how testing it was.

“It was just a really tough game,” he said.

“It was very physical and, if I remember rightly, the pitch was pretty water-logged too. It meant it was a real forward battle but as we’ve seen out there today the pitch here is in great condition.

“Hopefully we’ll get a decent track, both teams can throw the ball about and play some good stuff. But we know Ireland are going to turn up and throw everything at us. We are aware of that.

“We are preparing for the best of Ireland but hopefully they’re preparing for the best of us as well because it’s important we go out and play like we can.”

Ireland, led by Sheffield Eagles coach Mark Aston, lost their opening game against Fiji 32-14 on Monday night and are priced at 45-1 to produce a shock today.

World Cup news: Page 6.