England coach Roy Hodgson and captain Wayne Rooney look ahead to their crucial Euro 2016 Group B clash with Wales at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis in Lens on Wednesday (15th June)

Less than 24 hours now until the game everyone's been waiting for.

England versus Wales is upon us. Gareth Bale's offered his thoughts on the passion levels of the two nations; and some English players have responded.

Roy Hodgson is aware of what's been said, yet feels talks is cheap.

"I don't really like to comment on things that other people have said. We, we are perfectly satisfied with the passion that we bring to our games and, we certainly don't have any doubts ourselves about our passion, our desire, our commitment, our wish to do well in the tournament. So, if other people have another opinion then and think that they're better at it then that's fine by me, but it's certainly not something that I really believe is worthy of comment if I'm to be brutally honest."

Wayne Rooney will once again captain England against their near neighbours in Lens on Thursday.

Rooney was a taken off in the second half of the match with Russia, and he sees the game plan against the Welsh being no different from Saturday.

"I think as, the same mentality that we had against Russia. We've got three games in this group, two left and we're preparing for every game the same. We're not going to prepare differently because we're playing Wales and we know a lot more of their players. They play in the (English) Premier League. It's... the same preparation for this game whether it's Wales, Russia or Slovakia. So, we're doing our job professionally, we're preparing well and it's down to us as players now. We've done all our work on the training pitch. It's down for us, to us as players to go out and do it on the pitch."

A win for England on Thursday and the Three Lions can start planning for the knockout stages, Wales won't let that happen though without one hell of a fight.