England head coach Stuart Lancaster has revealed that he has held a conversation with Roy Hodgson in preparation for this year's World Cup.
The 45-year-old was keen to learn from the positive and negative experiences of his peer, who has led the England national football team to two major tournaments.
As the days tick down to September's showpiece competition on home soil, Lancaster has also been busy speaking to other leading sports figures.
"I spoke to Roy Hodgson about his experience at the World Cup," he is quoted as saying by The Mirror. "The lesson was you have got to win the first game. Get momentum. They played very well in the first game. It all came down to momentum. It was very much Roy's feeling, that not having got the first game win, they didn't have momentum.
"I have spent time speaking to the people involved in the Olympics in 2012, really, the cyclists and how they dealt with the pressure of the home Olympics, so that's been useful. Speaking to [Team Sky chief] Sir Dave Brailsford, Dave very much emphasised you have got two ways of thinking about it.
"You either think, 'What happens if we don't succeed in front of the home crowd?', or positively, you think, 'What happens when it all goes right?' and 'What it's going to feel like if we can really, really perform well?'. They did that exceptionally well, so managing that home Olympics was successfully done by every sport, really, there were very few sports that didn't deliver."
England have eight more games to play before the World Cup gets underway, starting with their Six Nations opener against Wales in Cardiff next month.
Daniel Lewis
