Parochial battle set to define two legacies

From shortly before 8pm tonight the streets from Camden to Carmarthen will be deserted.

The hit parade will not be chosen by the DJ but rather by 30 men on a patch of grass in south-west London where the eyes of the world will be on this most parochial of battles.

It will be brutal. There will be blood, and reputations will be both forged and destroyed. Odds are that one of the coaches involved, Stuart Lancaster and Warren Gatland, will not recover from the result.