He said a lot of groundwork had been done and that in players like Chris Ashton and Ben Foden and Manu Tuilagi there were the ingredients of a new, winning England.
It was too soon to say that he would walk away - or seek to stay, just possibly stronger at the broken places and less ready to trust in his belief that athletes called to international duty would understand their responsibilities - and would always respond to an invitation to behave like professionals who could allocate a segment of their lives to supremely concentrated effort.
Of course, he knows better now than when he made his announcement that there would be no strongly drawn limits on alcohol, no curfews and no restrictions on the presence of WAGs. What we will not know for some time is whether he will be granted - by the RFU or himself - the chance to act upon his new, hard-won knowledge of the English professional rugby player in 2011.
Defiantly, he still reckoned that the indiscipline which so clouded the start of England's tournament, and persisted in some form or other on and off the field, contributed no more than 00.1 per cent to the disaster which reached such a shocking denouement here at Eden Park, when England were so powerless to stifle the rebirth of the mercurial French team's self-belief.
Johnson insisted that a fantastic group of coaches had been assembled, one filled with experience and knowledge and that in the World Cup of England in four years' time the benefits would be seen in the development of a new generation of players walking in the steps of Wilkinson and Shaw, Moody and Thompson.
Yet even as Johnson voiced his defiance a new list of contenders was taking shape out in the ether.
In some minds it is headed by Sir Ian McGeechan, a man of the world beyond the touchlines of the game in which he has distinguished himself as a pragmatic, Grand Slam-winning coach of Scotland and of the Lions.
There is talk of the heady Springbok Nick Mallett, out of his time with the Italians and his more abrasive, World Cup-winning compatriot Jake White. You hear a word, too, for Australia's Eddie Jones. All of this speculation about contenders from south of the equator is powerfully fuelled by the brilliant tournament of Wales' latest adopted Kiwi, Warren Gatland.
The trouble is that Gatland's young and thrusting Wales have been almost everything Johnson's England have not.
They have been hard and cool-headed and came into this tournament insisting that this might indeed be the great shot of their lives, the time when the alignment of the planets was perfectly disposed to their ambitions.
Whatever happens in the semifinal against France, Wales have fulfilled their essential ambition. It was to come here and show the best of themselves. Johnson's misery on the morning of his accountability was the bleak knowledge that his team had consistently displayed not their best but quite often their worst.
They talked more about their need for a few beers than even the smallest swig of contrition. They have served their critics one self-serving bromide after another. They have refused to face their own shortcomings and when it came to redemption time, when the French, apparently so broken, had to be put out of their misery, the English response was pathetic.
It had no hauteur or cleverness or understanding of the challenge that had been presented. It was the rawest panic.
Maybe understandably, Johnson refused to acknowledge this reality. He talked about the ground that had been gained, not the huge tracts of it lost.
He had a position to defend and so, of course, he did it. It was lonely work and if you had to admire him for the sheer, cussed defiance of it, you could still only weep for the weakness of his case.
- Independent
