England will lead his namesake host nation after achieving outstanding success as the Great Britain Chef de Mission at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

In Rio, Britain superbly finished second on the medal table with 27 golds - gazumping China and becoming the first country to better their performance four years after playing host.

At the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games last year, Britain finished fourth and was one of the few delegations to stay entirely COVID free.

The Commonwealth Games has always been a straight shoot-out between England and Australia to see who tops the medal table.

Only these two countries have finished at the summit, with the exception of Canada at the first edition in Hamilton in 1930.

Australia ended top at their home Gold Coast 2018 Games four years ago, with England topping the pile at Glasgow 2014.

In Birmingham, there is only one position that England - and England - have their sights on.

"Our aspiration is to top the medal table," England said.

"That's what we're here for.

"It will be a pretty good arm wrestle. If you saw them at the World Swimming Championships recently, Australia are a very good team. 

"Everyone wants to come to the host nation and do the best they can against them.

"We've got 430 athletes who absolutely want to top the medal table. 

"We've got 500 support staff that want to top the medal table, we've got a nation who wants us to do that as well.

"We're going to give it everything. The reason we love sport is that it's not predictable. 

"So I can't say where we'll be in two weeks time, but everything that we could have possibly done to support the athletes is in place."

England admitted that the packed sporting year, including the World Athletics Championships which concluded in Eugene last month, has made things tough for athletes who want to compete at every competition.

"In this particular calendar year it has been congested," he said.

"You're back-to-back from the Worlds to the Commonwealths to the Europeans. 

"For our athletes to peak all the time is quite challenging for them. 

"Physically, it's demanding."

As well as performing well, England wants the host nation's delegation to conduct itself in the right manner as they prepare to welcome the Commonwealth.

He is someone who has attended 10 Olympic Games in a leadership role, and will reprise Chef de Mission duties at Paris 2024, so knows what he expects.

"When I was in Tokyo, a sailor from the early 50s who competed for Great Britain, and who I'd never met, wrote to me and said that he was impressed with everything the British Olympic athletes were saying in media interviews," England said.

"We work a lot on the culture of the team, the culture and the values and the behaviours around the team are super important to me. 

"We've been on a journey for sometime with Team England athletes.

"We have a welcome for every athlete who comes in, predominantly sport by sport. 

"We speak to every athlete. We were at our welcome in the Village and I said publicly to everybody who was there, that as a host nation every athlete has the opportunity to be good hosts, and I want them to be good hosts.

"It's complicated trying to get from Village to Village, it's a complex Games to pull off and if you're not familiar with it, it's even more complex. 

"I want us to help the fellow nations and fellow athletes the best we can. 

"We've helped two Commonwealth Games Associations with some of their logistics which will give them some performance support, and we're happy to do that."

England said he had a number of hopes for how the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games will go.

"On the sporting front I'd like to see a strong transition from junior through to senior, through to the Paris 2024 cycle," he said. 

"For Birmingham I'd like to see a legacy and that they use the Commonwealth Games as a springboard for hosting international events or whatever the aspirations of the city are.

"For young people in the region and across the UK, and across England in particular, I'd like to see the opportunity to see participation rise.

"For T20 women's cricket I'd love to see this as a platform for it to be included at multi-sport Games in a way that the 1998 Kuala Lumpur men's cricket hasn't.

"It's an opportunity for Sport England to invest in the Commonwealth Games, and for Commonwealth Games England to leave a real strong lasting legacy for Melbourne 2026 and beyond. 

"There's a whole raft of it really. 

"An opportunity for some sports that don't necessarily get showcased to strengthen their participation levels in a way they haven't done, in many respects in a way that some of the sports around London 2012 didn't either.

"There's some pretty tough areas in Birmingham. There's some pretty tough areas in the West Midlands. 

"It's an opportunity for those kids to swim in the same pool as Adam Peaty, to run on the same track as Dina Asher-Smith, to jump on the diving boards that Jack Laugher and others are going to compete on." 

With some questioning the relevance of the Commonwealth Games, England said he believes the event still has importance and is worthy of its place on the calendar.

"It's been really invigorating," he said.

"It's been an opportunity to work more closely with a lot of Olympic athletes. 

"We wouldn't necessarily get a second bite. 

"Tokyo was only last year and I was talking with some of those guys.

"There's an opportunity to see them in the European Games next year and then the opportunity to see them in Paris. 

"We don't usually have those close touchpoints. There are a number of people who worked in Tokyo who are now embedded in the team. 

"So for me it provides a continuity that we wouldn't normally see.

"When you talk to Adam Peaty, and you talk to Jack Laugher, and you talk to Emily Campbell, and you talk to these guys who have committed the last two years of training to become a Commonwealth champion at a home Games, a home Games brings it to a different level and you see that it absolutely does have relevance. 

"When you see the team Australia has put out, the swimmers they have put out, it has relevance across the Commonwealth.

"We're excited to see what England can do on the field of play. And I have every confidence they'll do very, very well."