WALES and England fans were flooding into the Vieux Port in Marseille on Friday afternoon ahead of this weekend's fixtures. There were also Australian accents heard around the Old Port and one representative of Wallabies Travel was seen with a hangdog expression in the lobby of a hotel as he had a load of punters but Eddie Jones and his Australian side are already back down under. It had shades of 2007 when hundreds of New Zealand fans descended on Paris, with their team already knocked out in the quarter-finals in Cardiff, and were desperately trying to flog tickets to England fans when Brian Ashton's team unexpectedly made the last four, and the final.
■ FIJI seem to have got the best hotel deal for squads who have been based in Marseille for quarter-finals week. They have been billeted at the Sofitel at the far end of the Vieux Port which is next to a statue of Missak Manouchian, a Turkish born hero of the French resistance in the WW2. Rooms were still available be tuning in.”
