James Lawton: Reach for the stars

After the year of improbable glory, the astonishing style of England's Ashes triumph, Liverpool's stunning success in the Champions' League and the re-birth of Welsh rugby, there can be only one new dimension in the remit of 2006.

It is of enduring greatness, not sleight of hand or brilliant opportunism or a mere willingness to fight to the end. None of these qualities can be for one second dismissed, not after Flintoff and Pietersen at the Oval, Gerrard and Alonso in Istanbul, and Henson, cool, big-footed and certainly not at that moment daft Luke, landing the monster penalty that beat England at the Millennium Stadium.

But let's not set our sights low; let's not settle into some subliminal slough of diminished expectation. This dying year is full of warm memories, but the next one, when you think about it, has the potential to be better.

Yes, there were moments of surreal brilliance in 2005 but now we want more: we have both the year and the appetite for it.

We have the greatest of all sources of globe-spanning exhilaration in sport, the World Cup of football in which England may say that in Wayne Rooney, Steve Gerrard, Michael Owen, Frank Lampard and David Beckham they have the means to compete with still another set of "little gods in yellow" representing Brazil.

Most of all we have Rooney, a young man who has already proved that he has within him both the ability and the desire to touch the stars. Hope is never idle when you have such a force, of nature as well as football.

We also have England's cricketers, regrouping after reality intruded into their dreams of world conquest in Pakistan and pitted against India, the wiles of Sri Lanka and Pakistan again and, then, ultimately, Australians with their hearts set on revenge.

We have the demand on Welsh rugby players that they prove that last winter they did more than briefly tug at the roots of lost native genius.

There has rarely been such a delicious menu of possibilities stretching so evenly across our national sports, but then nor has there been more risk attached to a return to that place which so often has undermined our best hopes as a sporting nation: the land of fancy and make-believe where we tell ourselves that we are better than we are.

We have seen it happen in cricket most recently in Pakistan, where England arrived trailing glory and left doing the same thing with their tails.

Why was the Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's subtle questioning about England's ability to return to the heights they achieved throughout the summer so well laid? Perhaps because, as an Englishman himself, he saw the fatal signs in that triumphal traipsing across London, the thronged streets and the Prime Minister's reception, and then when the Test battle was over in Pakistan and lost so disastrously, Woolmer could muse again on the priorities that now saw the great hero Flintoff getting up in the small hours of the morning before a one-day game to receive, for the benefit of a television audience, a personality prize that had already lost some of its gloss.

England's captain, Michael Vaughan, swore that his Ashes-winning team would stay honest competitively, but it was a declaration that wilted on the sub-continent.

Maybe an inherent weakness of England's cricket psyche was highlighted in the former Test player Mark Ramprakash's revealing diary of a season, Four More Weeks, in which he did not disguise his dismay that so many of the young players who represented the future of the formerly great county Surrey simply didn't seem to care enough at vital phases of a difficult season. Ramprakash never fulfilled his own potential as an international player, but it was for no lack of dedication, nor talent, and one remembers his passion after making what, it was tempting to believe, was a breakthrough Test century in the West Indies. After his knock, he stood for a long time in the shower and said to himself, "At least I'll always have this." A tigerish fielder, Ramprakash maybe cared too much.

Now the current England players, who can still recall the edge and the exhilaration which came to them with the win over Australia, have the chance to prove how much they want back the feelings that enveloped both them and the nation at the Oval a few months ago. It will require more than a sprint across the peak of the Ashes. It will demand a slogging year of application, of resolve to fight every session, every day as though everything depended upon it. That is what the Australians had been doing for a decade or so before the ambushes at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge. England have to show they can walk that road not for a summer but a whole year.

England's footballers have to remember that this could be their one and only chance to reach the place in the annals of the nation's sport that the Boys of '66 have enjoyed for 40 years now. They have one serious handicap. It is the lack of the tactical certainties and coherence that Sir Alf Ramsey fostered over the years. For Ramsey it was an article of faith that players of varying levels of ability and sharply different attributes knew each other's games so completely they could anticipate every feint, every pass. Under Sven Goran Eriksson such an understanding has always seemed remote, and the lack of it now lies at the heart of doubts about the team's ability to compete at the very highest level.

The irony of this weakness blazed out of the recent polling for the world's best player. Both Lampard and Gerrard figured prominently, but not on account of their performances for England. That was not possible because when they play for their country they might be inhabiting not only different jerseys but planets. This is a problem that has to be resolved if England are to have a significant chance in Germany, and if they do not make such a challenge it will be a scandal of squandered opportunity.

With the possible exception of Brazil, there are no great teams going to Germany. There are good ones, no doubt; before their coach dismantled the team in the final minutes of the friendly with England in Geneva, Argentina looked formidably accomplished, at least going forward, and particularly so when the hugely creative Juan Riquelme was on the ball. Italy can never be discounted, and Marco van Basten has made a remarkable coaching effort in organising the Netherlands.

Eriksson's England will face tough but not insurmountable challenges in the later rounds. The right momentum, some nodding awareness between Gerrard and Lampard, the kind of inspiration that lifted Rooney so high in the European Championship in 2004, and Owen's unfailing ability to score big goals in big matches, are the keys to England's ability to make a serious effort. Can they do it? There is unquestionably the potential for great achievement, but in the vital area of team understanding and self-belief it would be optimistic to believe that England's preparation has laid down any basis for certainties.

If England win in Germany it will not be because of remorseless Ramseyesque planning and grooming and tests of compatibility; it will be because players like Rooney and Gerrard, Lampard and Owen have seized their moment and snarled their frustration at past failures; it will be because Rio Ferdinand has finally worked out that his wealth, if he looks after it with anything like sanity, is for ever, but his time as a player of outstanding ability and relative youth is already growing thin, and if Beckham, too, accepts that he has had a career of unmatchable celebrity and huge wealth but strictly limited achievement as the captain of England.

Such a dawning could indeed make 2006 one of the truly unforgettable years, as 1966 will always be for those who saw it and felt it and rushed into the streets to celebrate more fervently than at any time since Victory in Europe was declared.

Elsewhere, we can maybe celebrate Ricky Hatton's willingness to fight the best - and warm to the courage he will inevitably bring into the ring against superior opponents like Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto. We can back Colin Montgomerie to crown an extraordinary recovery, and repossession of Europe's Order of Merit, with attempts to win a major that are not crippled by the self doubts which have so regularly betrayed him in the company of Tiger Woods anywhere outside the ropes of a Ryder Cup. We can watch the progress of Andy Murray at a Wimbledon when for the first time he faces at the outset the pressure of hope that each year tightened like a noose on Tim Henman - and let's hope we can do it without the same stomach-churning hysteria.

We can be fascinated as Chelsea seek to add a dimension to their game and win their first Champions' League, the crucial test coming against the beauty and spontaneity of Barcelona. We can also be enthralled by the development of Liverpool as they seek to defend the great trophy they won so sensationally and at the same time compete seriously in the Premiership. And, remarkably, none of this is to mention the dramas of the greatest managers of their age of English football, Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger. How can it be that they have become sub-plots in a wider story? It is called the march of time and circumstances, and their only comfort must be that their fates still retain a compelling interest. This shouldn't surprise anyone outside of the Fort Knox of Stamford Bridge. They did, after all, set a brilliant agenda for so long, and only the bleakest of spirits would assert with any confidence they have fired their last shots.

In 2006 they too can make a contribution to a year of greatness in football and sport. They can fight for the best values of their teams and their careers. They are winners who are now judged so harshly only on the high standards they have set. Such critical assessment should perhaps be less of an exception to that willingness to mistake passing success for truly great achievement. If it was, the glory of this new sporting year would maybe be less of a dizzying hope.