One of the concerns some on the Rugby Football Union had about putting Martin Johnson in charge of England three years ago was not so much his lack of management and coaching experience but that he would be the boss of players who had been his colleagues on the field, head boy turned headmaster.

If his three-year tenure ends next month, two of the men who were with him in Sydney when the World Cup was won in 2003 will have helped undermine him. Johnson kept faith with the player whose drop-goal won the World Cup eight years ago, Jonny Wilkinson, even though the outside-half was a more uncomfortable fit in the side than his rival, Toby Flood, and even when his goal-kicking form deserted him. Mike Tindall's failure to apologise immediately after being caught in a clinch with a woman on a boozy night out following the opening match against Argentina meant that an issue which should have been dealt with festered.

Tindall was asked to sign a statement apologising for his behaviour in a Queenstown bar just a few weeks after he had married the Queen's grand-daughter, but remained silent. As momentum built up in the media, Johnson had to defend a player who had stood alongside him in Sydney, saying in effect that there was nothing wrong with players occasionally going out drinking.

The RFU, by fining Tindall £25,000 and ejecting him from the England squad on Friday, was effectively condemning the way the incident had been managed by England in New Zealand. Without a mea culpa admission from Tindall, Johnson should have sent him home, a course of action that may have been taken by a manager with greater detachment.

If Johnson is offered a new contract, his next squad may not have any survivors from 2003. Wilkinson will only be considered in future under exceptional circumstances as he is exiled in Toulon; Lewis Moody has retired from international rugby; Simon Shaw looks bound for France in his final season; Steve Thompson is 33, the same age as Tindall whose England career was probably over anyway: would the RFU have been so bold had it been considering a sanction on a much younger member of the squad who would have been around for the next World Cup?

If Tindall may be seen as a scapegoat, he is one who generates little sympathy because of the way of a player of his experience and standing derailed the campaign at a crucial stage by failing to respond as an incident of relative inconsequence turned into the biggest story of the tournament for virtually a week. The louder his silence, the less secure Johnson looked.

When Johnson took charge of England in 2008, the RFU had just concluded an investigation into the behaviour of some players on the trip to New Zealand that summer. The tour manager then was the man who pronounced judgment on Tindall, and three others, on Friday: Rob Andrew, who is now in the Union's performance department awaiting a new job title.

Johnson's formidable reputation as a player was partly built on his no-nonsense approach and part of his remit as manager was to inject the squad with a healthy dose of discipline. He came across as a player-manager, someone who had not quite crossed the divide between one career and the other, and he had a higher tolerance threshold for misdemeanours than had been expected.

Players have spoken out in support of him, which is to be expected given that he is still in position, although Courtney Lawes on Friday described Johnson as a good coach, before correcting himself and substituting the word manager. The second row also described all the incidents off the field during the World Cup that had commanded headlines as harmless, stopping short of blaming everything on the media.

It was a question of image. As a player and captain, Johnson did not concern himself with political correctness. If the RFU made the right appointment in 2008, and there were signs last season that England were capable of mounting a credible World Cup challenge, the mistake it made was not to bolster him with a blazer-wearing team administrator, who would have had nothing to do with coaching or selection but who would have had an influence on player protocol. Such a figure was sorely missed during the World Cup.

The RFU was at least as much to blame as Johnson for what happened in New Zealand, but for an organisation that has long lamented the selection of the national side, many of its own selections have been questionable. As Andrew sits in judgment on Johnson, his own position will soon be under review. Is it any surprise that England struggle to move on?