Decision-making and leadership has already played a big part in the 2015 Rugby World Cup and that will only continue this weekend according to Wallabies legends John Eales and Tim Horan.

Japan famously turned down a number of penalty goal opportunities when trailing South Africa by three points, before scoring after the siren to claim the biggest upset of the tournament.

England on the other hand, were slightly less fortunate against Wales and were left to rue a decision to kick for touch in the closing stages of their narrow loss.

“As a leader you’ve got to make calls on the run and that’s what I think is part of being a captain or a vice-captain,” Horan said.

“You see the Wallabies now have a captain and two vice-captains, so you can make a call on the run on the pitch. So, yes, there’s messages coming on to the field but you also have to make the call what you feel is best for the team. You get the flow of the team, the vibe on the field, whether you’ve got the other side under pressure and you kick for touch, or do we need to take three points at the right time.”

The Wallabies have been blessed with a host of great leaders over the years, with Eales admitting he learnt a lot about leadership from his captain in 1991 Nick Farr Jones.

“Nick was the sort of leader who gave you a lot of confidence to be part of the team,” Eales said. “You just felt like he was always in control, and the team was always in good stead when he was there.

“Probably one great example – and it’s a simple example – when we played that World Cup final in 1991 I’d just turned 21 that year and I was out on the field and we were kicking off. Being the lock, I was over on the sideline ready to chase the kick as the English crowd are singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and you couldn’t help but be overawed to some extent by that situation.

“I remember looking across and the first face I saw was Nick’s, as he was closer to the centre of the field. And Nick just saw me and he just smiled. A lot of the time as a leader there’s not a lot you can do, there’s not a lot you can say, but sometimes it’s just your actions, and his smile just calmed me down.

“I thought, ‘Well if he’s relaxed then I should be relaxed, he has a lot more pressure on him than I have’. Those sort of moments, it’s not that he necessarily thought about what he had to do, he was just so natural in his role.”

However both of the former Australian captains agreed that good leadership meant little if you didn’t have a strong team around you.

“One of the first rules to be a great leader is you need to have a great team, and I had a great team and I think it made me look a lot better as a leader through that period of time,” Eales said.

“We had a lot of discipline in the team, from the coaches to the players, and we also made a lot of sacrifices along the way,” said Horan, who believes trust within the team was the most important ingredient.

“We trusted in the coaching staff, we trusted in the gameplan that we were always going to play, but we also trusted the guy next to you. Whether it was a centre defending next to you or a winger or, god forbid, a tight-head prop defending next to you in the line, you knew that everyone was going to do their job and you trusted them enormously.

“We knew if anything went wrong on the field we knew how to handle it. I think when you’ve got Nick Farr-Jones, Michael Lynagh, Simon Poidevin and those guys in the early stages and then, later in the career, looking at a George Gregan, Stephen Larkham, John Eales, David Wilson, those sort of players who had so much experience, that we had four or five captains within each team.”

It’s hard to compare the current crop of Wallabies to some of the names mentioned above, but all that could change come Sunday morning.