Ireland's 61-year wait for a second grand slam may be over but, according to England's team manager Martin Johnson, the Six Nations table would end up very differently if a fresh tournament were to commence tomorrow. It is also Johnson's belief, approaching the first anniversary of his tenure, that England will run the southern hemisphere nations much closer next season.
Thousands of revellers in Dublin and beyond will regard Johnson's opinions as those of a sore loser but the former World Cup-winning captain is adamant there was little between the teams and that England's second-place finish is proof of a side on a sharp upward curve.
"If you were to replay the Six Nations, over the next five weeks would it end up the same way? I don't think it would," said Johnson yesterday. "I think there would be different scores, different results. Ireland won it but they only beat us by one point and Wales by two. They found ways to win those close games. There is a part of you that would love to have another game this week after the improvements we've made."
This new-found confidence will be road-tested in two summer Tests against Argentina, with a squad of around 25 players due to be named after the Guinness Premiership final in mid-May, but Johnson is already promising England will be a fitter, tougher proposition for the major southern hemisphere sides later in the year than they proved last autumn.
"We will be a better team than we were last November," he said. "How far along the road we are is a difficult question ... consistency within a game, never mind from week to week, is key but I think we've got a huge amount of improvement still in us and there's a lot more to come from this squad. We need to push the boundaries on everything we do."
Johnson, however, has finally admitted his fledgling managerial career was shaken by the record 42-6 home defeat by South Africa and that his players have done well to recover from the experience. "That was pretty difficult," he said. "When you look at what we've been through I'm pretty proud of how the players have handled themselves because it's been tough at times. I was confident that we had a good group of players who could bounce back if we kept faith in a core of guys who never stopped worked hard. If you're involved in high-level sport, you're going to get a kick in the nuts occasionally. That's part of it. Things are never as bleak as people think they are."
He admits, even so, that his first year in management has been a challenge – "there's a huge amount of responsibility and you're learning all the time" – but denied his occasional flashes of temper in the stands were down to the unfamiliar stresses of his new role. "I was pretty angry as a player," he said.
The RFU management board, meanwhile, has rejected Premier Rugby's proposal to add six league games to next season's fixture list.
