Even at a couple of days away from the match and a couple of hundred miles away from the action, it's enough to make you wince.

No-one loves a tackle more than a Samoan, unless he is a Tongan. Or a Fijian. England's callow players face a combination of all three at Twickenham on Saturday and each of them can expect, at some point in the proceedings, to be tackled with all the force, but none of the subtlety, of a runaway truck.

They may have spent hours over their shiny new laptops, they may have pampered their bodies in the spa at their swanky Pennyhill Park retreat, they may have calmed their nerves on the hotel's golf course deep in the Surrey countryside, they may have rehearsed their own moves on the hotel's rugby pitch till they can do them in their sleep, but they still have no way of knowing how they will cope when poleaxed by a Polynesian.

The Pacific Islands team has had less than a week to forge a game plan from three distinct rugby cultures – the best they can hope for is what Ireland's Keith Wood used to describe as "organised chaos" – but each of their players is desperate to make the most of a rare appearance at Twickenham, each is desperate to showcase their talents to prospective employers, and each is desperate to make his presence felt.

England need players who can first cope with the physicality, then rise above it, before stamping their own presence on the game. Manager Martin Johnson and coaches Brian Smith, John Wells and Mike Ford may think they have chosen the right men, and prepared them in the right way, but they won't be sure until the bodies start flying.

Of course, the combinations they have chosen are full of wannabes with all the right body language and all the confidence of youth. Danny Cipriani has already shown in his one full England appearance that he has the inclination and aptitude of a ring-master. His half-back partner Danny Care is bristling, cocky and chippy, while centre Riki Flutey's Maori hardness deservedly earned him the Player of the Year award last year and new full-back Delon Armitage, so we are told, is both abrasive and confident.

But Johnson, being the man he is, will be looking for something else. With his understanding of sports history, he'll know that while carbon-copies rarely match the success of their originals, it is possible to reproduce a winning formula.

England rugby's most successful era, in which Johnson the captain played such a crucial role, was founded on Clive Woodward's insistence on the need to find a one per cent improvement in 100 areas, on the manager's determination to eliminate excuses from the players' mindsets, and on the chemistry engendered by an outstanding group of players.

It's self-evident that there'll never be another Martin Johnson, but the manager knows that if he can find another leader with his athletic excellence, his ruthless determination and his ability to keep things simple, then England will be pointing in the right direction.

He also knows that there is no point in looking for the next Jason Robinson, the next Jonny Wilkinson or the next Lawrence Dallaglio. Such players only turn up once in a generation.

But he can hope to reproduce the environment that allowed these extraordinary talents to flourish. He's already sanctioned a return to Pennyhill Park for reasons that are both practical – it's close to Twickenham for home matches and Heathrow for away sorties – and inspirational, as a reminder of England's greatest hours.

And in banking on the hotel to remind England's new players of their predecessor's great deeds, he's also hoping that it will remind them of past resolutions and past ambitions. Dallaglio has recently spoken of how the England players of the late Nineties were determined to be not just the fittest in the country, but the fittest in the world. Wilkinson, in his new book 'Tackling Life' makes no secret of the fact that he wanted to be the best player on the planet.

Whether training or resting, Wilkinson believed "each player can only ever be doing whatever he can to help the team succeed". When playing, every player had a duty to be positive and to put themselves on the line whenever the pressure was on.

And, even though England are expected to win this weekend, the pressure will undoubtedly be on, especially in those torrid first few minutes when pumped-up Pacific Islanders will be intent on mangling bodies and jangling nerves. England's rookies will be forcibly reminded of the old truism; "no pain, no gain."