Adrian Paul

England may need something from the BBC highlights reel if they are to beat Australia in international autumn 2009 .

Richie Myler was just five years during the campaign of England 1995 World Cup, which marked the end of the regular land cover. Photograph: Richard Sales / Sportsphoto

Remember Jason Robinson scored two tries on his debut in Great Britain against New Zealand in 1993? Ellery Hanley or chipping, regathering and liaison with Daryl Powell to send Paul Eastwood over a crucial try in the historic victory against Australia at home three years earlier? Or better, perhaps all, Jonathan Davies Borough Brett Mullins to score the match winning try in the first round of the 1994 Ashes series for a Lions team that was reduced to 12 men by the dismissal of the first half of Shaun Edwards for high face?

These three occasions wake of rugby league had a number of things in common that were too rare in recent years: they were all at Wembley, they have participated in every British victories over southern hemisphere opposition, and they were Saturday afternoon before an audience of terrestrial television.

These memories will be stirred over the weekend that the game in England Australia in Wigan 2:30 p.m. with a kick-off in the first international to have been screened live by the BBC for nine years and only the second since 1995. Who let the older players in the team struggling with a strange mixture of novelty and nostalgia - while most of them grew up watching Tests ashes on the rostrum, the captain, Jamie Peacock, played in a Saturday afternoon internationally.

Even then, it was an afternoon, he prefers to forget, as he came on as a substitute in the 49-6 humbling defeat by New Zealand in the final 2000 World Cup semi. (Adrian Morley, thirtysomething than others in the current team in England, has been excluded from this game with a rib injury.)

It is a punishment even thought that the majority of youth of the current team may struggle to recall the pre-Sky Super League days when the national team have been regularly observed on terrestrial TV. Kyle Eastmond and Sam Tomkins were all six during the 1995 World Cup which was effectively the end of the era of the International League Live on the Beeb, Richie Myler and Tom Briscoe, the two teenagers in the current team have been out of kindergarten.

It is dangerously simplistic to say that Mr Hanley, Davies, Edwards, Robinson and Martin Offiah were the biggest stars in Britain than any other player in rugby league has been over the last ten years, just because their works were most regularly observed by an audience of TV than the likes of Andy Farrell, Sean Long, Keiron Cunningham and Robbie Paul. But the return on a Saturday afternoon on the BBC International, particularly against Australia, could provide a major boost for the game in this country - if England can at least be competitive this weekend.

It is a worrying weekend big "if", given the latest evidence - the performance of England in the World Cup last year, including the 52-4 humiliation by the Australians in Melbourne and their convincing victory over France last. Any danger of complacency was blown up by the Australian New Zealand in their 20-20 draw at the Stoop, and kangaroos will certainly be more consistent in their second match of the tournament.

In Morley, Peacock, Sam Burgess, Gareth Ellis, James Graham and James Roby, England have players to be reasonably optimistic of them corresponding to the pack.

But if they are to turn into the kind of stirring performance and results.