The buildup to Sunday's meeting between England and Wales at Twickenham, which over the years has been one of the grudge fixtures on the rugby calendar, has been uncharacteristically deferential. Compliments, rather than barbs, have been exchanged by two management teams who provided the coaches for last summer's Lions tour to Australia.
They were headed by Warren Gatland. Now back in his day job with Wales, he did use his team announcement on Wednesday to send one missile in the direction of England's training base in Bagshot when asked about the propensity of teams he coaches, starting with Wasps in the first half of the 2000s and carrying on with Waikato, Wales and the Lions, to produce when it matters, masters of the big occasion.
Wasps won three Premiership finals under Gatland at Twickenham as well as the Heineken Cup and the Anglo-Welsh Cup there; they also secured the Challenge Cup under his watch. Waikato became the first winners of the revamped National Provincial Championship under him in 2006 and Wales, after winning the grand slam in 2008 and 2012, retained the Six Nations last year by overwhelming England at the Millennium Stadium in what is arguably the high point of his reign.
The way they controlled their aggression and emotion was reminiscent of England in the Martin Johnson era and the Lions adopted the same approach in the final Test against Australia in July. With the series squared at 1-1 and Gatland being criticised for being tactically timid in the second Test, he took charge, dominating training and selection in a way he had not previously done on tour.
As the Wales defence coach Shaun Edwards, who worked with Gatland at Wasps, remarked at the time, the New Zealander changes his approach before a major, defining match.
He leads from the front, taking the pressure off his players and fellow coaches, and if leaving out his experienced scrum-half Mike Phillips on Sunday was not in the same category as dropping Brian O'Driscoll for the final Test against the Wallabies, it was another singular act by a coach whose capacity to produce winning teams is unrivalled in Europe.
England, in contrast, have tended in recent years to fall some way short at the moment of reckoning: they were well beaten in Dublin in 2011 and in Cardiff last year as they chased the grand slam and they subsided to a dysfunctional French side in the quarter-finals of the last World Cup.
Wales fell to the French in the semi-final but they played for the final hour with 14 men after their captain, Sam Warburton, was sent off and missed two late kicks to win the match. Gatland was asked, after announcing his side, which has the centre Jonathan Davies and the second row Alun Wyn Jones returning from injury, whether Wales's greater experience and knack of peaking under pressure gave them an advantage over an England team that will not include one player who has started a Lions Test. He replied: "They [the England camp] are all saying they have learnt some pretty harsh lessons from last year. All the talk is that the boys have turned into men and they have grown up and learned. Time will tell, won't it? We'll see on Sunday."
It was classic Gatland. He had earlier praised England, saying that the player of the tournament so far was their full-back Mike Brown, ensuring that Wales will have devised a plan to minimise his influence, that they were a developing side playing more expansive rugby this season, a reflection of burgeoning confidence and that they were well coached.
"That confidence and self-belief are what make them dangerous," he said, before pointing out that Wales had won at Twickenham in two of their last three Six Nations encounters there, having gone 20 years without a victory with most of the defeats inglorious. "I think it was Adam Jones [the Wales prop] who said that there wasn't any fear going to Twickenham. I'm not sure who has won on the last three occasions the teams have met – I think it might have been us."
It will be Wales's last appearance at the ground before next year's World Cup final, when they will be in the same pool as England and Australia, playing them both at Twickenham. Gatland acknowledged that Sunday's result would give the winning team a psychological advantage before the tournament, although he did point out that England were missing several players through injury, including one he described as having the X-factor, the centre Manu Tuilagi.
"Next year's game at Twickenham is going to be even bigger than this weekend's," said Gatland. "If we can win on Sunday, it will be four in a row against England and if we win the Six Nations as well they start having a few doubts. Our starting XV will not be too far off 1,000 caps when the World Cup starts and not too far off its peak in terms of the age profile. We have a massive amount more experience than England and part of my job this week is to build the players up to have the confidence and self-belief that we are good enough to go to there and win.
"Twickenham was a bridge too far for a number of Welsh players in the past but I enjoy it as a place to go. I think it is a great stadium: I had some good results there with Wasps and we were lucky enough to win that game with Wales in 2008, more than lucky, while we played pretty well there a couple of years ago. At the end of the day you have just got to look at it as a rugby pitch and two teams going out to play."
Wales are the only team England have always lost to in the Stuart Lancaster era and if the men in red responded to a heavy defeat in Dublin by routing France in Cardiff in the last round, the return of Davies, who suffered an arm and chest injury early in the autumn international against South Africa, is as important as topped-up morale. He adds balance to the three-quarter line and is a foil for the fly-half Rhys Priestland, who was put under pressure by England two years ago and found his way to the sin-bin.
Davies's inclusion means Wales return to Twickenham with 12 of the team who started there in 2012: Rhys Webb for Phillips is the only change in the back division, while England's one survivor behind is likely to be the fly-half Owen Farrell, with Tuilagi not considered match fit.
"England's backs have taken to international rugby quite well," said Davies. "We just need to use the familiarity and experience we have to put pressure on them. I am sure the atmosphere will be hostile but we have encountered that before and you have to embrace it.
"You have got to be excited by it: two years ago we won the triple crown there and not many of us had experienced that level of success before. The Twickenham factor has always been a huge thing for them, so it's fair enough for them to be favourites. If you are expected to win, you've got to win; I would rather be expected to lose and win."
England favourites? "We're excited to be going there as underdogs," said Gatland. If the home team have the motivation of avenging last year's humbling defeat, Wales's head coach will be using the bookmakers' prediction that his side will lose as fertiliser. Rarely has he tasted defeat at Twickenham and when his players perform when they have to, they are following their head coach.
