But as one of sport's grand traditional series is resurrected after 22 years at Wembley Stadium, England's captain George Williams believes his side really could be the ones to at last tie the Kangaroos down.
The Warrington halfback, who knows all about the strength-in-depth and evident superiority of the Australian league after a couple of years in the NRL with Canberra Raiders, is adamant victory in the three-match Ashes would eclipse anything he's achieved in the game.
The 30-year-old has won two Super League grand finals, a World Club Challenge and a Challenge Cup, but insists: "If we could get this Ashes series win, it would 100 per cent top of my grand-final wins ... and it would give us a lot of belief to go on and win the World Cup."
After Graeme Langlands' 1973 Kangaroos won that series 2-1, Australia went on to win the next dozen series in what became one of sport's most dominating sequences.
Now, even British bookmakers believe nothing's changed, as they rate Kevin Walters' men 1-4 favourites to win the series and make them still odds-on fancies to prevail 3-0.
Williams understands the logic of all this.
"They have the title as the best team in the world and rightly so with what they've done over a long period of time," he concedes. "Don't get me wrong, we know how good Australia are. If we're being honest, it's a superior competition to Super League.
"But that doesn't mean we don't have enough players within ours to match them. They're human just like us, and this group is ready.
"People are quick to forget what we've done over the last couple of years. A lot of people were talking about Samoa when we played them - and we beat them. A lot of people were saying we couldn't beat Tonga - and we beat them."
And there's the 14th man, too. "The English noise," he explains, calling on the 60,000 at Wembley to intimidate the visitors.
"We need that, to be honest. The Australians are not used to hostile singing environments."
The last time a British side lifted the Ashes was when GB beat the Kangaroos 28-7 to win the decisive third match in Sydney in 1970, thanks to a mesmeric, match-winning try from late great Roger "the Dodger" Millward with a run he felt went on for ever.
Recalling the moment in an interview with Sky TV, Millward reflected: "It were a great feeling. I mean, there's no better feeling than being at Sydney Cricket Ground at end of a game, there's 77,000 Aussies on that stands crying because we've just beat 'em. I thought that were great, personally."
Fifty-five years later, a nation will think it just as great if the class of 2025 really could follow suit.
