England no longer spoilt for choice of captain

1.00pm - By CHRIS HEWETT

It was Sir Clive Woodward's great good fortune to manage an England side positively awash with potential captains.

From Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio to Neil Back, Matthew Dawson, Jason Leonard, Kyran Bracken, Richard Hill and Phil Vickery there was more than enough leadership material for the red rose army, and almost enough for the Red Army itself.

Woodward's successor, Andy Robinson, was not quite so garlanded with options when he went captain-hunting late last month. Most of the obvious candidates were in retirement or injured or filming for the BBC.

As one door closed, another one slammed in the coach's face. Robinson effectively found himself left with Jonny Wilkinson and yesterday, he clutched him to his breast like a long-lost brother.

Wilkinson knows what it is to play the front man, despite his instinctive craving for privacy. He is one of two joint-captains at Newcastle - the other being a rather less celebrated player by the name of Ian Peel - and while he is hardly one of life's natural performing poodles, he has slowly come to terms with life in front of a hundred notebooks and a thousand cameras.

More pertinently, from Robinson's perspective, there is more of the Johnson than the Dallaglio in Wilkinson - a fact that sits perfectly with the coach's idea of who and what an England captain should be.

Robinson respected the Wasps No 8 as a barn-storming, heart-on-the-sleeve leader, but was always deeply suspicious of his good-time image and enthusiastic embrace of celebrity status.

He much preferred Johnson's quiet, colourless but ruthlessly intense approach to business. Those two spoke the same language, if it is possible to have a language based entirely on facial expression and the occasional swear-word.

To be sure, Wilkinson has a similar track record of example-setting in the England environment, and like Johnson, his examples have tended to stem from deeds of derring-do on the field rather than tub-thumping interventions in the dressing room.

Up to and including last year's World Cup, he was brave to the point of recklessness.

If some of his courage was misplaced - sending Wilkinson into 20 rucks a game is the sporting equivalent of asking Beethoven to compose a theme tune for "Emmerdale" - the rest of it was worth its weight in gold ingots.

His tackling, unprecedentedly fierce for a player in his position, was very nearly as crucial as his goal-kicking. But that was then.

The great imponderable now, more than nine months after Wilkinson's long-term neck problems finally caught up with him and left him at the mercy of the surgeon's knife, is whether he can still deliver the defensive displays that allowed him to redefine the outside-half's role.

He can still kick goals from everywhere, and he can still pin the opposition in their own half of the field with a swing of the left boot - a boot so educated that it should have the letters Ph.D printed on the instep.

But will he ever be as fearless as he once was? Can he still tackle the world, and to hell with the consequences? By appointing him captain, Robinson clearly believes all is right with the Wilkinson body.

But coaches and directors of rugby up and down the Premiership beg to differ.

By dissecting the video evidence as well as watching him in the flesh, they suspect Wilkinson is avoiding tackles rather than seeking them out. They say he is tentative in contact.

They believe the No 10 channel he once defended with the ferocity of guard dog is now open to intruders.

If this turns out to be the case, the Wilkinson who takes the field against the tough-nut Canadians at Twickenham next month will be a very different stand-off to the one who crash-tackled his heart out before dropping the goal that won England their first World Cup 11 months ago.

- INDEPENDENT