Banter. Where would sport be without it? It makes triumph sweeter and makes defeat more painful. Banter brings a little more meaning to sport: the right kind of intensity. Banter allows us to cope with bitter enmity, and with the softer emotions that sometimes lurk in the background. And, perhaps the best of all, banter lies between the sporting nations of Australia and England.

It's been going on for the best part of a couple of centuries and it shows no sign of losing its edge. The two nations play each other in a vital qualifying match in the Rugby World Cup on England's home ground of Twickenham on Saturday.

The Ashes, the sacred trophy for which the two nations compete at cricket, started as banter. It was a joke about the death of English cricket. What other two nations compete in deadly seriousness, again and again and again, for a joke?

High sporting intensity is leavened -- and perhaps made sharper -- by repeated references to jokes ancient and modern. And that is what lies at the very heart of Anglo-Australian sporting rivalry.

During the Rugby World Cup of 2003, the banter was in full cry once again: England were for once the favourites, even though the tournament was held in Australia. An Australian newspaper criticised England for being boring. This is a jibe with much pedigree: when England hosted the Rugby World Cup in 1991 they reached the final thanks to a disciplined if unimaginative game plan. But, goaded by their opponents -- inevitably Australia -- they tried to play like the Harlem Globetrottters. Inevitably they lost: out-bantered.

So in 2003 Australia tried the same tactic. "Is that all you've got?" That was the headline that accompanied a picture of the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, England's deadeye kicker. An English newspaper came up with the perfect counter-banter: the same headline, but alongside a picture of Kylie Minogue's bottom.

Ah, the cultural cringe: another of the great staples of this eternal rivalry. When you tease Australians about their lack of culture, or for that matter, history, they don't always have a ready answer. The great Australian caricature, Dame Edna Everage -- played by the expatriate Australian Barry Humphries -- explained Australia's sporting supremacy as: "The open spaces, the gorgeous climate, and the total lack of any intellectual stimulation whatsoever."

And it's true that Australia have had the edge over the centuries, but that only makes the regular reverses more vivid. For England there's always a pleasant surprise when they beat Australia; for Australia always a rather dismaying disappointment. Where England hope, Australia expect.

Australians tend to feel that the entire world is out of joint when they get a sporting reverse at the hands of England. So when England tore the Australian scrum in half in the quarterfinals of the 2007 World Cup and knocked out the old rivals, there was a feeling in England that God had taken English nationality. The tournament is remembered -- in England, anyway -- not as another occasion when England lost in the final, but as the time the Aussie scrum ran up the white flag.

An Ashes contest can break out in just about any sport. Or all of them at the same time. There was a sudden delighted realisation during the Beijing Olympic Games that Britain was going to win more medals than oh-so-sporty Australia. Suddenly the banter was flowing again in unlikely places like the Olympic velodrome.

The banter got a bit out of hand in the 1930s. It became an international incident. The Australian response to defeat in the Bodyline cricket series scarred relations between the countries. They're still not entirely balanced about it; the English call it the longest whinge in sporting history. This is a double sting: Australians traditionally caricature the English as whingers.

The issue at the heart of Bodyline was that English fast bowlers were hitting Australian batsmen with the ball. So 40 years later, Jeff Thomson, an Australian and perhaps the fastest bowler of them all, said: "The sound of cracking Pommy skulls is music to my ears."

But consistency is for wimps, is it not? There is sometimes a touch of sentimentality in the banter. Shane Warne, the great Australian leg-spinner, was teased spitefully by English supporters during the 2005 Ashes series. They sang songs about his divorce ("Where's your missus gone?"); they taunted him for dropping a crucial catch ("Warnie's dropped the Ashes!") But at the end, with Warne fielding by the noisiest section of the crowd, they sang another song. "Wish you were English! Oh yes, we wish you were English!" And not just for his immense skill, either. It was because here was an enemy who was not just admired. He was also perversely loved.

For there is a profound intimacy in this relationship. There is a sense in which each nation is the other's completion: Australians envy the English sense of history and rootedness, the English are enthralled by the freedoms of Australian life, most particularly the freedom from the class system that plagues the country to this day.

In this sense of completion there a need for each other, and behind that lurks a strange love. Which certainly won't stop the rugby players from trying to tear each other's heads off on Saturday. No, intimacy makes all excesses more meaningful. It is sometimes said that Wales have never fulfilled themselves as a rugby nation on the world stage because they're only concerned about beating England. That's limited their scope.

But it's also true that for the English, what matters more than anything else is beating Australia. Especially in rugby and cricket. Since Australia are usually at the top, or damn near it, in both these sports, the rivalry has given England greater ambitions, and the will to fulfil them. Though I'm not convinced that will be enough for England to prevail on Saturday. I've said that there is love in this rivalry; do you think that will make Australia reluctant to spoil England's party on this most significant of matches? Too bloody right it won't.