The prize for both sides at Parc des Princes on Friday is a quarter-final appointment with Australia in Marseille on Saturday week.

But unlike in 1999, England are anything but red-hot favourites to progress at a canter.

That is a fact not lost on Leicester flanker Corry, who has retained leadership duties for England’s biggest Test match since the 2003 World Cup final.

World Cup captain Phil Vickery, available again after serving a two-match ban, is consigned to a bench role as support for in-form tighthead prop Matt Stevens - England head coach Brian Ashton making just two changes following last Saturday’s 44-22 victory over Samoa.

Lock Steve Borthwick and flanker Lewis Moody – respective replacements for Simon Shaw and Joe Worsley – join a team which should be good enough to extend England’s reign as world champions for at least another week.

Corry nonetheless warned: “We came through the Samoan test, but that counts for absolutely nothing unless we get the same result this week.

“There is no way (complacency) is going to come into our psyche.

“All we’ve had is one decent performance out of three in this tournament.

“In the Tonga versus South Africa game last Saturday [South Africa won 30-25] I think South Africa probably under-estimated them.

“You always expect a degree of confrontation up front when you play the Pacific Islanders, and they took it up a level from Samoa.

“We are certainly not going into this lightly. We are taking Tonga as a very dangerous threat.

“We’ve seen their games; we’ve seen their results. We don’t need to talk them up any more than that.”

Tonga are set to confirm their starting line-up later today, having given themselves a quarter-final opportunity through beating Samoa and the United States.

Captain Nili Latu said: “It’s the biggest game in our history. We have a great chance of getting into the quarter-finals.

“We have had three great weeks – but we don’t want to lose now. We have set a benchmark for ourselves, and I expect the boys to step up.

“We don’t want to be going home next week. Our destiny is in our own hands. No one can help us but God.

“England is a one-off match, and the losers won’t get another chance to put it right. We need to stand up and be counted, or we will get left behind.

“We have been training for a long time to make ourselves an 80-minute team.

“We are strong; we are calm under pressure and we will continue to play the way we’ve been playing. We will get opportunities to score, so it’s in our own hands to take them.

“We haven’t got the greatest facilities or equipment in Tonga – but we’ve shown here that you don’t always need that.

“We are a tight group and we respect each other, and we are not playing just for us – we’re playing for the people of Tonga.

“People under-estimated us, but we believed we were good enough to get to the quarter-finals. We are one step away from that now.”