Mick Jones is taking a laid-back approach to the defence of his Commonwealth hammer title.

While the majority of the England squad flew out to Australia at the start of March to acclimatise and recover from jet-lag, Jones plans to arrive just two days before he is due to compete.

The 42-year-old has also decided to steer clear of the athletes' village and will instead rent a house on the outskirts of Melbourne with the rest of his family.

Such a relaxed build-up suggests the Crawley star is ready to hand over the title he won in Manchester four years ago without a fight but nothing could be further from the truth.

Jones realises this will almost certainly be his final hurrah in a major championships after 20 years on the international stage and is determined to go out with a bang.

And once another gold medal is safely in the bag he plans to pack his bags and go on a two-week holiday with his wife and children Down Under.

"Melbourne is 11 hours ahead of us and I've been told you are supposed to allow one day for every hour time difference to get over jet-lag," he said. "But I would just get bored if I got there too early. I want to get to Australia and then get on with it.

"I'm due to land at 6.30am on Monday and I will go straight out to practise. The next day I will do some lifting in the gym and then on Wednesday it is qualifying.

"It may not be the textbook way to prepare but it suits me. This way I can relax because I'm not relying on anybody else to tell me where to be at what time.

"I'll have my whole family around me so I will be totally chilled out and I find I always throw better when I'm relaxed.

"I don't want people to think I am not taking the competition seriously because I am. I would not even bother going if I didn't think I could win.

"It was the same when I won in Manchester. I refused to stay in the athletes' village and drove up on the day of the final against team orders. It worked then and I'm confident it will work again."

Despite his age Jones has every reason to fancy his chances of emulating his surprise victory in Manchester.

He is currently ranked fifth in the Commonwealth, just as he was four years ago, and has a remarkable record when it comes to the Games.

This will be the fifth time he has taken part and he has never finished outside the top four. He was fourth in Edinburgh on his debut in 1986 and, after narrowly missing out on selection for Auckland in 1990, repeated the feat eight years later in Canada.

He finally made it on to the podium with a silver medal in Kuala Lumpa in 1998 and then went one better in 2002 to send the fans inside the City of Manchester Stadium wild. Many thought that famous victory was the perfect opportunity for Jones to hang up his hammer for good but he promised to defend his title and is determined to succeed.

"If somebody had said I would win a Commonwealth gold medal when I was 39 years old I would have told them not to be so silly," he said. "To defend the title at 42 is even madder but I have even more hunger in my body now than I did four years ago.

"It was great to win on home soil but I think it will mean even more this time. Not just because of my age but because I will have to beat the Australians in their own back yard and that is something every Englishman loves to do.

"My age is not a problem. What I might have lost physically I more than make up for with experience and that could prove crucial when the pressure is on.

"I am the daddy of the competition and they know that. I have been throwing a hammer at international level longer than the rest of them have been alive.

"It's my fifth Commonwealth Games so I'll be going there super-confident while the others will be tense and you can't afford to suffer from nerves in the final of a major championships."