England can have no excuses if they fail to end four decades of frustration in the forthcoming World Cup.

National coach Steve McNamara is putting the finishing touches to his intensive training camp in South Africa, where most of the 24-man England squad have spent the past two weeks, in readiness for Saturday’s friendly against Italy and the World Cup opener against Australia a week later.

But for McNamara the work began almost four years ago when he assumed the reins from Tony Smith after England’s customary defeat by the Kangaroos in the 2009 Four Nations final.

He knew there would have to be drastic changes if England were to lift their first major silverware since Clive Sullivan’s Great Britain defied the odds to lift the World Cup in France in 1972.

McNamara’s first task was to persuade his bosses at the Rugby Football League to grant him more access to the players than ever afforded to his predecessors and, once he overcame that hurdle, he put in place an elite training squad and formed an England Knights team to ensure there was a production line of talent.

For the past two years McNamara also managed to secure state-of-the-art facilities at Loughborough University for regular mid-season get-togethers before embarking on a high-altitude end-of-season training camp in Potchefstroom.

The whole idea has been to get his Super League-based players away from the distractions of both club and home life and into in an environment where they can both hone their skills and bond with their new team-mates.

“The physical aspect is one of the main reasons but obviously out here they’ve no other distractions,” McNamara said on Tuesday from South Africa. “They don’t have to go pick their kids up from school.

“It brings a focus together and we can get a lot of work done in a short period of time.”

McNamara extended the camp this year, getting the players not involved in the Super League Grand Final out to Johannesburg early to link up with the NRL-based quintet, and believes he has seen evidence of a new camaraderie among the group.

“When I walk into a room and there is a sea of noise from all different players from all different clubs, all enjoying a rapport with each other, that is a sign that a team is close,” he said.

“You have to ask the room to be quiet before you start talking and that shows a team is together and prepared to work very hard for each other, to do whatever is required to win games.

“If you had a room where it’s a graveyard and no-one is talking to each other, you’ve got issues.”

Those issues were in evidence during the last World Cup, where friction between players from Leeds and St Helens, the Grand Finalists who provided the bulk of the England squad, was a contributory factor to a disastrous campaign, despite attempts to play down the rift.

McNamara, who was assistant to Smith in 2008, added: “There’s been a huge improvement and we had to facilitate that. We had to give the players an opportunity to acknowledge what some of the issues were surrounding the international team.

“That was right at the start of the programme, it was the catalyst for everything that followed. The players had to acknowledge there were some problems and that things could improve.

“They took it on board exceptionally well. We play a brutal, ferocious game and some of the things they do to each other on the field of play is tough to overcome but the way they have done that is a credit to the team.”