Decisions, decisions. Coaching and management demands a range of skills but good selection can make or break a developing team. The trick is to pick just ahead of the curve rather than just behind it, to have a sixth sense of when a particular side has reached its limit and needs reinvigorating. Injuries clearly play a part and a bit of luck helps, too.
But what happens when just about everyone is fit and eager and, as with England, you have 90-odd players to consider? Welcome to Stuart Lancaster's world as he prepares to unveil his autumn international squad this week.
If old-style England trials were to be reintroduced "The Rest" would fill three dressing rooms. To illustrate the fact here are four XVs, plus a further list of standby candidates and the currently injured. The first side will not be a million miles away from the team to face Australia on 2 November. Fourteen members of the "second XV" have already been capped this year. The last two contain a host of names – George Ford, Jonny May, Sam Hill, Dave Ewers, Jack Nowell, Will Fraser – who are rising swiftly up the ranks. Throw it all into one giant sorting hat and it becomes apparent that identifying England's best team – as opposed to their best squad – remains an ongoing struggle.
The same old questions keep recurring. What is England's best midfield combination? Who should be playing at half-back? What is the most complementary back-row blend? What about the second row? Hooker? By this stage, two years out from a World Cup, most international coaches should ideally know the answers to the majority of those questions. England probably only have about half a dozen individuals inked in, if that.
It explains why Lancaster is trying to downplay the profile of the captaincy. Tom Wood, Chris Robshaw, Dylan Hartley and Geoff Parling could all do the job and may end up sharing it between now and 2015. Yet none of them, for assorted reasons, are absolutely nailed on as the best player in their position for the foreseeable future.
Parling was the only one who actually went on the last Lions tour but he and Joe Launchbury are under some pressure from Courtney Lawes and Dave Attwood. Tom Youngs is currently starting ahead of Hartley, a fit Tom Croft would be a strong contender at No6 instead of Wood and Matt Kvesic is seen as the way forward as a specialist No7, the shirt Robshaw has been wearing.
And, while we are at it, how many of those four would make the current pre-eminent All Black team? What about the likes of Ben Youngs, Chris Ashton, Mike Brown or Owen Farrell? All good players but would New Zealand choose them ahead of, respectively, Aaron Smith, Julian Savea, Israel Dagg and Beauden Barrett? It is around this point that you begin to sympathise with Lancaster and realise just how vital the next eight months will be in terms of identifying not just his best team, but a potentially world-beating unit.
This week's autumn international squad announcement, oddly, has been complicated by the relative lack of injuries around. At the last count 30 of the 33-strong senior EPS squad named in August are fit and available, with only Manu Tuilagi, Brad Barritt and Croft sidelined.
That means choosing two centres from Joel Tomkins, Luther Burrell, Jonathan Joseph, Henry Trinder and Sam Hill – Tomkins and Burrell appear the best fit – and promoting a back-rower from the Saxons. On the shimmering evidence of Sunday's win over Cardiff Blues it should be Exeter's Tom Johnson, still under-rated by many but perfectly suited to the all-court game England are aspiring to play.
Then again, at what stage does Ford's obvious promise eclipse Toby Flood's experience? Why would you not want a spectacular finisher of May's ability at least in your squad? And are Ewers and Northampton's Sam Dickinson not both performing with more elan at this precise moment than Ben Morgan? What about Anthony Watson, Henry Slade and Luke Cowan-Dickie, all of whom look potential internationals of the future? In theory it is a nice position to be in, to have a squad with plenty of depth. But there is a difference between a good squad player and someone capable of winning a World Cup semi-final with one game-changing intervention. Lancaster needs to separate his Woods from his Twelvetrees and keep in mind that steadiness will get England only so far.
Too many cooks? Four potential England XVs
1st XV
M Brown; C Ashton, J Tomkins, B Twelvetrees, M Yarde; O Farrell, B Youngs; A Corbisiero, T Youngs, D Cole, G Parling, J Launchbury, T Wood, M Kvesic, B Vunipola.
2nd XV
A Goode; C Wade, L Burrell, K Eastmond, B Foden; F Burns, D Care; M Vunipola, D Hartley, D Wilson, D Attwood, C Lawes, T Johnson, C Robshaw, B Morgan.
3rd XV
M Tait; C Sharples, J Joseph, S Hill, J May; T Flood, L Dickson; J Marler, R Webber, Henry Thomas, G Robson, G Kruis, E Slater, W Fraser, D Ewers.
4th XV
C Pennell; J Nowell, H Trinder, S Geraghty, D Strettle; G Ford, Haydn Thomas; M Mullan, C Whitehead, P Doran-Jones, G Kitchener, K Myall, C Clark, L Wallace, J Crane.
On standby
D Paice, R Buchanan, J George, P Doran-Jones, N Catt, N Wood, A Waller, C Matthews, T Savage, J Gibson, S Dickinson, R Wigglesworth, J Simpson, S Myler, H Slade, E Daly, J Elliott, U Monye, A Watson, N Abendanon.
Injured
T Croft, M Tuilagi, B Barritt, J Haskell, L Cowan-Dickie.
MATT FINISH
Did anyone out there manage to watch all 50-plus hours of rugby union coverage on Sky Sports over the weekend? By the time Racing Métro and Clermont Auvergne started limbering up late on Sunday evening, you suspect relationships in hundreds of households across Europe were under significant strain. Too much of a good thing? Probably, but the Exeter-Cardiff Blues and Toulon-Glasgow fixtures produced some particularly striking action.
Man of the week? If there is one player in the Toulon team who you would currently pay to watch, live or on screen, it is Matt Giteau, the Australian centre whose Wallaby career seems to have petered out.
England and Wales will hope it remains that way; as underlined by the sharpness of his performance against Glasgow, there are few better creative second five-eighths out there.
PREDICTION OF THE WEEK
Curses. Our resident result-predicting rabbit Thumper 2 has struck back and cut the autumn deficit to 3-2, courtesy of Castres' victory over Northampton. This week we head to Scotland; old lop ears, who must have a bit of Caledonian blood somewhere, has plumped for the food bowl marked "Glasgow" while I think Exeter will continue their current hot streak.
