Already in a race against time to get ready for Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final against New Zealand, Australia’s battered squad received positive news yesterday with no-one showing serious ill-effects from Sunday’s bruising semi-final win over Argentina.

The Wallabies went into the match with two key players, David Pocock and Israel Folau, still nursing injuries and loosehead prop Scott Sio missing and had to use all seven subs to make it through the match, which they won 29-15.

But yesterday, Australian coach Michael Cheika said the early signs were encouraging that everyone would be available for the final at Twickenham.

“We’re not too bad. We’ve just had recovery now and spoke to the doc and the physios,” Cheika told reporters from the team’s leafy training base in Teddington, south-west London.

“The players who went into the match with some injury are looking pretty good the way they came out of it, probably much better than we expected so we’ll see how that progresses.

“There are some sore bodies but no more than normal for a World Cup semi-final.

“Once we get today out of the way we can start seeing everyone running on the field and we’ll get a better opinion of how everyone is running for next weekend.”