Peter FitzSimons: OK Clive, let's try that again

It was a surreal moment. There on the steps of the Cardiff Hilton on a bitterly cold Sunday morning in November 1999, standing in the detritus of the wild night before - celebrations after Australia's victory in the World Cup having gone through the night - stood the English rugby coach, Clive Woodward.

He was watching in the misty morning as stragglers straggled home, to the drunken strains of Waltzing Matilda in the distance.

As he was an old mate of mine from the days we spent playing with Sydney's Manly club in the 1980s, of course I gave him a big slap on the back and an earnest inquiry as to "Clive, yer old bastard, how the hell are they hangin?"

In reply, he blinked a little, kind of shocked like, and said he wasn't Clive Woodward, at which point another bloke in an expensive trench coat came up and purred, "Your car is ready, Prince Albert".

Prince Albert of Monaco?

Yes.

Oh. Well, how they hanging anyway?

The short answer was, "Pretty well, thanks".

I don't know where the real Clive was at that moment, but I bet I know what he was doing - precisely what he's doing now, plotting the downfall of all those who stand in the way of English greatness.

Day and night. Night and day. Over breakfast. On the bus. At lunch. In the players' rooms. In their ears. On and on and on.

History shows that his plotting from the low ebb of 1999 onwards was extraordinarily successful as he set new standards in professional preparation, leaving absolutely no stone unturned and no turn unstoned in his effort to extract the very last ounce of performance he could get out of his charges.

It was precisely that last tiny bit of juice left in the lemon that with England's very last squeeze was able to get them over the line against Australia.

And bravo to him for that.

In hindsight, only a guy with Clive's intensity and unbelievable reservoirs of energy could have bumped the English out of their usual groove of losing magnificently and into the groove of consistently winning, against the odds.

The question now must be asked, though, after the All Blacks' extraordinary victory over England last week - RAH! RAH! RAH! - whether Clive might have been with the team one year too long, whether after seven years of having the blow-torch put to their bellies, what the English team most needs is the chance to breathe.

I mean, fair dinkum! The fact that there are 19 support staff with this English side means that, put together with the vast retinue of players, this is less of an English tour than an English invasion.

The last time an invasion that bloated came to these parts from northern climes was in 2001, when the Lions came to Australia under the coaching of ... well, never mind ... and that, ultimately, wasn't any more successful.

But surely there must come a time in the life of an English player who has already got to the top of rugby's Everest when the kind of unremitting intensity that comes with such a huge number of people having input into their performance must start to curdle your commitment a little.

Rugby is chock-a-block with precedents of brilliant coaches whose intensity is their greatest asset in the short-term and their greatest liability in the long-term.

One who comes to mind is the bloke who was at the Manly Rugby Club around the time of Clive, before going on to coach Australia - Alan Jones.

Jones was like no other coach I've had before or since. But in the short-term with Manly and then the Wallabies, he was the best coach any of us had ever come across - extracting from us a professionalism we did not know we possessed.

Manly won the premiership for the first time in 32 years, and Australia had three years of unparalleled success.

But after five years of Jonesy's blow-torch and well after I had cart-wheeled off into a ditch with an extra nudge from Alan, it all became too much, and in 1987 the Wallabies went five games without victory.

I don't say that will happen to Clive. I am only hoping! But at the very least, at the bare hungry sniffin' minimum, you'd have to say that his blokes are well on their way to four defeats in a row if your blokes can do the right thing today and we can follow up next week.

In the meantime, the reaction in Australia to the All Black victory has been very positive.

First, it was a great game of rugby.

Second, it is written into our genetic code that we will always be delighted to see England lose at anything, just on principle, and in the case of the English rugby team that goes double.

And third, while it is true the upcoming Bledisloe Cup series is starting to look a smidgin troublesome, it is always wonderful to see New Zealand on course to peak between World Cups. More! More! More!