We've got the World Cup in our hands

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The holders, dismissed as 50-1 no-hopers only a fortnight ago, believe their heroic 12-10 win over Australia will inspire them to beat France in the first semi-final on Saturday night.

"We are in this World Cup to win it," said full back Jason Robinson. "It has never been a case of settling for anything less and definitely not now."

Celebration time: England players on a high after beating Australia

While Australia consider their next move, New Zealand's reaction to falling during the most astounding weekend in the history of the competition was to sack coach Graham Henry within 24 hours of the defeat by France in Cardiff.

"We will have a new All Blacks coach in place by Christmas," said New Zealand RFU chairman Jock Hobbs. "I take responsibility for this campaign."

England skipper Phil Vickery epitomised the way the squad had taken a leaf out of Martin Johnson's captaincy manual by basing their win over Australia on the 'grumpiness' which had underpinned the campaign four years ago.

"There are certainly a lot of grumpy old men in the squad and the more they are criticised, the grumpier they get," said Robinson. "Phil's one of them, so nothing's changed there."

France, who returned home in triumph, hailed England as "a great team."

"You don't beat Australia in a World Cup quarter-final if you are not a great team," said head coach Bernard Laporte.

"They went through a difficult time but we all knew they would be back eager to defend their title and here they are."

Mark Regan, at 35 England's second oldest player, added: "We were always going to use our scrum as a weapon but we were frustrated with the way it was being refereed at the start.

"They were a bit chirpy in the first five minutes. One of them was shouting off. I couldn't quite hear what he was saying but after the first couple of scrums I turned round and said: 'Hang on, our kid, because you've got another 75 minutes of this. So chill out.'"

Head coach Brian Ashton said: "It's difficult to get a sense out here of what reaction the win has caused back home.

But I had 52 messages on my phone in the first hour after the match, some of them from people I'd never heard of."