The alcoholic celebrations by some after the opening win against Argentina were over the top. And though Mike Tindall's singular misbehaving, exposed by a security guard's bizarre vendetta, plus the distasteful treatment by three players of a female hotel worker while they were videoing a tour diary were isolated incidents, they were accompanied by rugby cock-ups too.
Suspensions for Courtney Lawes and Delon Armitage; the World Cup-leading counts of ruck and scrum penalties conceded; and the utterly daft and possibly paranoid ball-switching episode involving Jonny Wilkinson. They were all, in the context of an attempt to win England a second World Cup, more calamitous than the misdeeds a privately irate Johnson tried to sweep under the carpet with a catch-all description: "Rugby players go out for a beer shock."
No one should run away with the idea that Wales are now teetotal chapel-goers who have burned their Tom Jones CDs because of their suggestive lyrics. But they have given up heavy drinking after games, which some might say is a start.
The hugely impressive just-turned 23-year-old captain, Sam Warburton - a Cardiff-born son of an English firefighter apparently with the working discipline to match his dad's - is the face of a newly serious squad who got accustomed to rising at 4am for their summer training camps in Poland and have kicked on from there.
Wales have as many young players as England, whose most obvious new hope is the Samoan centre Manu Tuilagi, but they are making that rawness work for them with a collective spirit and understanding that power in the modern game is more important than the old Welsh devotion to dancing around.
In this way the venerable Shane Williams has been recast from a wing desperate to get hands on the ball at every opportunity to a selective picker and poacher, trading brilliantly on the muscular incursions of Warburton, Jamie Roberts and friends.
"The young guys in this squad have got to take this experience and learn from it," said England's Mark Cueto, one of half a dozen or so players unlikely to see another World Cup.
But learn what? That to have a good time while touring is no crime as long as it stays within sensible boundaries - ideally those laid down by the manager and agreed by one and all.
The bright spark who thought that handing the diary camera to James Haskell - a tabloid favourite for his schooldays association with a controversial video - was a good idea needed shooting. It was redolent of an "up yours" attitude, just as with the kit manufacturer who clad England head to foot in black day in, day out at training and for the match with Argentina, presumably to cock a snook at or at least demystify their New Zealand hosts.
"Guys will look back and think this was their last chance in a World Cup and that's a sickening thought," said Haskell, whose next port of call is Tokyo, playing for the Ricoh Black Rams. Asked if he thought it had been calamitous, he said: "Unfortunately when you put the England shirt on, the British media and everyone else likes to get on top of you.
"We were as professional as we could have been and guys worked as hard as they could. There were a couple of incidents that caught the headlines and allowed other teams who've enjoyed what New Zealand had to offer to do it in relative peace.
"It's always the way with British teams. It's a shame, because there's a lot of good support and we wanted to make sure we went out there and did justice to our country and to ourselves. "There are people who like to jump on an obvious situation and make a mountain out of a molehill. People have to realise we're all professional sportsmen working as hard as we can and no one is here on a jolly."
Rugby people are difficult to spook. Perhaps these particular men in black always suspected they would depart this beautiful country early.
And inwardly a few of them determined they would wend their way not with the old English stiff upper lip but with a middle finger extended and a defiant grin. They have left Wales as the standard-bearers now.
- Independent
