It was the West Indies cricket captain, Clive Lloyd, who best summed up the biggest dilemma for any mature professional sportsman. "It's time to retire," said Lloyd, "when your eyes go, your knees go and your friends go." By those criteria Jonny Wilkinson's decision to call time on his international rugby career was a little premature. He still has all his faculties and, at 32, is six years younger than his new Toulon team-mate Simon Shaw, who remains available if England want him.
Wilkinson, though, could clearly sense the prevailing mood at Twickenham. Barely had Stuart Lancaster, England's caretaker coach, settled into the temporary hot seat before he was making clear he intended to pick a more youthful elite squad. Those playing their club rugby outside England would also be struggling. The south of France is some distance away but Wilkinson will have picked up the vibes easily enough.
With Lewis Moody having taken a similar decision – writing your autobiography is clearly so exhausting it saps your ability to play Test rugby – Lancaster's dilemma is precisely how far back to prune the red rose. "There'll be an emphasis on youth but I won't ship out all the experience," he stressed. It is a tricky balancing act at any time, particularly in the wake of England's toxic leaked World Cup review. Lancaster already has to find a new fly-half, hooker (Steve Thompson has been forced to retire) and open-side flanker. They just happen to be among the three most influential positions in any rugby team. Toby Flood, Dylan Hartley and Tom Wood will almost certainly fill the gaps against Scotland at Murrayfield on 4 February but change is in the air. If the new regime were to whistle up three 21-year-olds instead it would truly amount to a cultural revolution.
Something along those lines could yet materialise. A new breed is certainly emerging. Within the Rugby Football Union there is a growing recognition the modern player is different to his predecessors. Kevin Bowring, the former Wales coach who is now the RFU's head of elite coach development, has been studying this shifting landscape closely. "I'd call the type of players we're dealing with now Generation Y. Most coaches are probably Generation X. It's important to raise that awareness."
The thoughtful Bowring also makes the logical point that the new wave of talent requires a different style of coaching. "The modern coach has to be a relationship manager. For me England have now got three of them. There's nothing lovey-dovey about Stuart Lancaster, Graham Rowntree and Andy Farrell but they know how to get the best out of people, whether it's firm and disciplined or relaxed and arm-round-the-shoulder. Look at modern coaches such as Jim Mallinder, Toby Booth, Conor O'Shea, Bryan Redpath. They're all good relationship managers. I think that is key now to moving on with the modern player."
Maybe that was what, in the end, undermined Martin Johnson. Interestingly, Bowring says the RFU would be happy to support Johnson if he decided to study for the formal coaching qualifications he still does not possess. "He has to recover from the experience and decide what he wants to do but the union is very supportive of anyone who wants to develop," says Bowring. "Martin admitted from the outset that he hadn't done any coaching qualifications and was a team manager."
The underlying message is that old-school assumptions are no longer applicable. Bowring, who has worked particularly closely with Lancaster and was part of the panel which appointed the 42-year-old Cumbrian, says he is trying to develop "T-shaped" coaches. "The vertical part of the T is your depth of knowledge in a particular area. The horizontal part is the breadth of knowledge you need across all components of performance: technically, tactically, mentally, physically, lifestyle, discipline, leadership etc. All that grows with experience. International coaching is different from week-in week-out club rugby."
It is also about gelling a bunch of talented players into one structure with one identity. For all Wilkinson's colossal contribution, he represents England's past; Owen Farrell, Alex Goode, Tom Homer, Ben Youngs, Courtney Lawes, Henry Trinder and Jamie Gibson are the future. In a perfect world England should be aiming to build a side with the next two World Cups in mind, not merely 2015. Clearly it helps to win a few games in the short term as well but English international backs in their early to mid-30s look set to become a near-extinct species.
What matters most, of course, is not how old the new guys happen to be but how good they are. Australia under Robbie Deans did not get it entirely right in time for the World Cup but Kurtley Beale, James O'Connor and Quade Cooper are all now seasoned internationals in their early 20s; had they been English they might still be playing in the Premiership A league. Some things, though, never change. In the northern hemisphere, where the pitches are heavier and the weekly grind more physically relentless, a little no-nonsense experience is always handy. So is a decent goal-kicker. Wilkinson may be past his best but he will still take some replacing.
New pen friend
It is good to hear the Welsh Rugby Union now has a Writer in Residence. The Welsh novelist, playwright and poet, Owen Sheers, has been invited "to capture for posterity some of the drama and cultural impact associated with the national sport of Wales". This, of course, has traditionally been the preserve of the finest Welsh rugby writers, from the Western Mail's JBG Thomas to our own Eddie Butler. None of them ever had the luxury of an open-ended deadline. Perhaps Mr Sheers could try composing his rhyming couplets at the Liberty Stadium this Friday night with a real live sub-editor screaming for his copy.
Worth watching this week …
Leicester v Clermont. Not necessarily the decisive game in Pool Four of the Heineken Cup – Ulster have already beaten the Michelin men – but the acid test of Leicester's season. Do they have the mental and physical resolve to overturn Sunday's 30-12 defeat in the Auvergne? If they lose again – and Clermont have front-row injury problems – it will be another sizeable blow to English rugby's bruised self-esteem.
