ENGLAND are just 80 minutes away from completing a remarkable turnaround which could see them installed as early favourites for the World Cup just 12 months after being also-rans.

On Saturday they face Australia in the final of rugby league’s Four Nations tournament at Elland Road in Leeds – the reward for defeating world champions New Zealand in a group match which was effectively a semi final at Huddersfield.

It was a victory that few would have thought them capable of a year ago, when the Kiwis twice beat England in the 2008 World Cup before going on to win the trophy.

England coach Tony Smith has set his sights on the next world cup in 2013 and has selected players who, although inexperienced now, have the potential to be the sport’s leading lights for the next decade.

It is more than 40 years since England beat the Aussies in a series and the chance to lay that burden down on Saturday is a huge incentive to the current England team. The question is, can they do it?

The Australian rugby league team, like the Brazilian football team, are one of those national sides that exude unflappable self belief and an almost aristocratic sense of entitlement.

Their record is quite simply stunning, and their capacity to produce generation after generation of extraordinary players is unrivalled.

But I think England can win – and two of the reasons why they can are called Sam Tomkins and Kyle Eastmond.

These two young men – both are just 20 years old – are already genuinely good players with the ability to become genuinely great players.

Jason Robinson, a pretty good judge, has already said that Kyle Eastmond has the ability to become a much better player than he was, and Sam Tomkins is already being spoken of by many seasoned observers as one of the most gifted kids to don a Wigan shirt since the glory days of the 1980s.

England’s impressive performance, led by the two young tyros, was in stark contrast to the inept display by England’s rugby union team.

The pre-match hype centred around the all-too-predictable return of Johnny Wilkinson at the age of 30 while England’s debutant was Duncan Bell, a 35-year-old prop, with what might best be described as an extensive waistline.

Even though the next rugby union World Cup, in 2011, comes around sooner than its league equivalent it shows a remarkable lack of ambition and foresight to not look at players who are far more likely to be in contention for a place on the plane to New Zealand. And yet another Twickenham defeat at the hands of the Wallabies highlighted a real problem for the sport.

Since it went openly-professional in 1995, English rugby union has failed to produce young players of real skill and ability.

Rugby league is still light years ahead in its ability to breed great players with the skills to entertain the public – and I’m looking forward to that talent shrugging off the weight of failures past this weekend.