Players enjoy the calm before the storm in Marseilles

There was a deathly hush along the Vieux Port tonight. The chatter among evening diners was muted, chairs were all turned away from the harbour to face the TV screens showing European football between Marseilles and Liverpool. Local restaurants, who do not mind charging fancy prices in this part of town, were able to place televisions where all their customers, dining outside, could watch.

Not that the football bothered three of Australia's backs. Nothing flash for Matt Giteau, Lote Tuqiri and Drew Mitchell as their quarter-final with England on Saturday here looms. They ambled down from their clifftop hotel for a simple pizza, largely ignored by passers by, though it will be interesting to see for whom the locals are shouting at the Stade Velodrome - perfidious Albion or Australia.

Fiji, who play South Africa here on Sunday, are noted for their religious beliefs and regular church-going habits, as are all the Pacific island countries. But they have taken it a stage further: their coaching staff include the Reverend Joji Rinakama, a Methodist minister who works in Nadroga and, in his spare time, coaches that side in rugby to such good effect that they are now provincial champions. A one-time back-row forward, Rinakama was good enough to play for Fiji's B side and has been involved with the national team for the last three months.

Fiji also have the services of two Australians, Shannon Fraser, 29,  and Greg Mumm, 27. Many of their players are older than these two, coaches to the backs and forwards respectively,  but the experience they gather here will be invaluable as and when they return to Sydney. Mumm, who damaged a knee in his teens, started coaching at 19 and is now involved with the New South Wales Waratahs academy; after the World Cup he will take up a coaching post with the Sydney club side, Norths. Remember the name in ten years' time.

Al Baxter, Australia's prop, is also a qualified architect and is one of those players with whom you cheerfully conduct a conversation without necessarily talking about rugby. His favourite stadium - from an architectural point of view - turns out to be the Sydney Football Stadium, as distinct from the Telstra Stadium out in Homebush where England won the 2003 World Cup. If Australia win at the Stade Velodrome, with its superb mountainous backdrop, that might go on his list too.