WALES versus England. The one that we've all been waiting for yet at the same time one that will be great to get out of the way.

There is no doubt that Friday evening will produce great sport.

Wales field a settled line-up and are buoyed by a long-awaited win against South Africa while England have responded to an injury crisis by bringing in four Lions.

Warren Gatland was right to urge caution about believing the hype about Stuart Lancaster's lengthy list of absentees; England may have lost one of their major threats in Manu Tuilagi but it's not as if they've had to call Phil de Glanville out of retirement to bolster their midfield.

If I was to pick a member of each side in a composite XV then it would be largely Welsh (Dylan Hartley at hooker, Chris Robshaw moved to blindside, Dan Cole's experience over Samson Lee at tighthead) but there are plenty of close calls.

There won't be another 30-3. It will be tight and tense, the sort of game that makes you marvel at how the 46 players involved can keep it together when you'd be a petrified, gibbering wreck.

And the 23 that have their arms aloft at around 10pm on Friday will be able to glance into the camera lens to say 'follow that' to those watching in hotels in Rome and Paris.

"That first game is going to be a sensational game," said Ireland boss Joe Schmidt at the tournament launch last week.

"And that will set a benchmark that will be ahead of what we did last year in the Six Nations anyway. We're going to have to be ready to meet that benchmark."

It is a mouth-watering Test at the start of a World Cup year and there is no doubt that the viewing figures will be massive, enabling the BBC to issue more propaganda about why the tournament should never go to Sky or BT Sport, while the Millennium Stadium will be buzzing.

In that way it is the perfect opener to the tournament, a brutal humdinger to set the tone for the five weekends of action.

It is a game that will engage the casual viewer of rugby, those that on Saturday will be more concerned with the north London and Merseyside derbies in the Premier League than Italy versus Ireland and France against Scotland.

But at the same time England against Wales can bring out the worst in rugby, the jingoism and trash talk from those from both nations who deserve the same tag as the football fans referred to by Half Man Half Biscuit in their song 'Breaking News': "Commodores, as in once, twice, three times a season, who feed sugar lumps to police horses at cup finals".

Hooray Henrys on one side, sparkly hat brigade on the other; everybody's got their idiots but things go up a not for this fixture and there's already another 'comedy' song on YouTube about hatred of English rugby.

It's interesting to note that Richard Wigglesworth has been named on the bench by Stuart Lancaster, the Saracens scrum-half who rightly called out a media outlet last year for a pathetic '15 irritating English rugby players who just love to wind up the Welsh'.

Everything will be magnified by a Friday night game that will be great for the television bosses but a nightmare for plenty in and around the ground.

Sam Warburton wrote in his Daily Telegraph column yesterday: "A friend of mine works in an office in Cardiff and he was telling me the other day that it will be shutting at 11.30am so that they can all start getting ready for the game. The stadium will be bouncing."

We live in an age where going a month without booze – 31 whole days – is seen as a mammoth challenge but there will be very few having a dry evening on Friday.

Frankly, Cardiff will be a hellhole when leaving the ground at around midnight and past experience from England's visit 2011 makes me expect an aggression in the air that simply wasn't there when France were the opponents in 2010 or last year.

The rugby will be magnificent but there are aspects of Friday and a clash between Wales and England that are anything but.