The English are certainly hoping so, announcing a £4 million ($6.7 million) boost in so-called lottery funding for athletes, with the single aim of embarrassing Australia at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

Australia is hoping to top the table in 2018 after coming second to England at the 2014 games in Glasgow.

But fresh off the euphoria of Team GB's most successful Olympics ever at Rio - where Britain beat China to rank second behind the United States with a total haul of 67 medals, 27 of them gold - Team England believes it has the momentum behind it to retain the crown on foreign soil.

In the Olympic Games British athletes are united behind the Union Jack, but in the Commonwealth Games the Empire competes as separate teams - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Karen Bradley said lottery funded had helped win medals in Rio and would keep on helping medals in Queensland.

"It will allow Team England – who topped the medal table in Glasgow 2014 – to take on the Aussies in their own back yard," she told the Tory conference in Birmingham to applause.

"Of course we'll be looking to work with Australia as one of our closest friends, but – hey – we still want to beat them," she said to laughter.

Olympians and Paralympians Dame Sarah Storey, Helen Richardson-Walsh, Vicky Thornley and Andrew Triggs-Hodge earlier appeared at the Tory conference and all credited lottery funding for their sporting successes.

Britain is the only country to ever improve it's medal success at the games immediately after the one they hosted, in London in 2012.

Triple Olympic gold medallist Andrew Triggs-Hodge said the British Olympic Committee had learned from Australia's mistakes.

"You look at Australia after Sydney ... the first thing they do is cut their funding," he said.

"Lottery in a nutshell is everything, I could not have gone as long ... it is everything - it means a lot," he said.

Dame Sarah Storey became Britain's most successful Paralympian after her Gold in Rio and said: "I can categorically say I would not be sitting here without that lottery funding,"

Under the UK's lottery funding system, athletes are paid directly via an "Athlete Performance Award"  (APA) for their sporting and living costs.

Medallists are paid up to £28,000 ($47,000) per year while those who finish in the top eight can earn up to £21,000 ($35,000) per year.

Athletes who can demonstrate they are capable of winning a medal can be paid up to £15,000 ($25,000).

Britain will send 400 athletes to the 2018 games in Australia, competing in 18 different sports.

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