Pommie-bashing has long been Australia's favourite sport but with as the World Cup final looms closer the taunts are becoming even more frequent and ferocious. Chief Sports Writer Steven Baker reports...

THERE is an adage that the most balanced Australian is one with a chip on both shoulders.

And as the Pommie-bashing has become ever more virulent with each passing day of this World Cup, so that maxim has seemed increasingly true.

The Australians' jibes at England's cricketers over the past decade have, for the large part, been good-humoured.

"What's the definition of optimism?" our Antipodean "chums" ask. "An English batsman wearing suncream."

Hardly a side-splitter, I grant you, but at least the quips have been given by the Aussies and received by the hapless Poms in commendable spirit. During the World Cup, however, the bile that has endlessly been aimed at England has not been borne from Australia's age-old rivalry with the Mother Country.

It has been borne from fear.

After reigning supreme against England in cricket, rugby league and - God forbid - football, Australia is at last running scared.

In the last four years, Aussie captains have lifted the World Cups in cricket and both codes of rugby in Great Britain.

The prospect of Martin Johnson raising the William Webb Ellis Trophy in the Telstra Stadium tomorrow sends a shiver down the spine of every self-respecting Australian sports fan.

And the Aussies have reacted in the only way they know how: with anger and animosity mixed in with a sizeable dollop of jealousy and envy.

Consider this offering from Queensland's Courier Mail after Joe Worsley acknowledged England fans after he was sin-binned against Uruguay.

"Worsley's all too smug reaction to crowd applause serves to reinforce the opinion among players and supporters from Australia and other rugby nations that England is an arrogant team."

The notion that England are arrogant has run throughout the coverage of the World Cup Down Under.

It is churlish to point out that this "arrogance" suddenly becomes "confidence" when Australia's most successful sportsmen show the same qualities that ooze out of the England team.

But such two-faced behaviour has been a principle characteristic of the Aussies' efforts to undermine England's campaign.

Before the semi-final with France, Sydney's Daily Telegraph revelled in having its dirty work done on its behalf. "England arrived in Australia as the world's No1 team, but there is growing pessimism around the England camp as the English media has turned on them.

"England also flew in with a five-eighth rated the world's best player, but now the question being asked is: 'Is Jonny Wilkinson cracking under the pressure'?"

At least the press Down Under have acknowledged that they are conducting a smear campaign against Clive Woodward's men.

"It can't have been easy, having to put up with a biased media out to get you day in, day out. It's got to drive a man crazy in the end - hasn't it, Clive?" said The Australian. And England's error in fielding an extra player against Samoa was met with TV adverts proclaiming: "Watch the best 16-man rugby team in the world."

Throughout their efforts to undermine England, there has been just one sliver of self-denigrating humour from the Wallabies camp. "Is that all you've got?" a headline in The Australian cried after England's workmanlike victory over South Africa.

Fast-forward a few days to a faltering display from Australia, and the same newspaper asked: "Is that all we've got?"

But that has been a lone nod in the direction of partiality from a nation that has worn green and gold-tinted glasses since the World Cup started. What makes such a one-eyed approach to this World Cup so lamentable is that Australians brand the English "whingeing Poms".

After this World Cup, it's a label that just won't wash.