Woodward's new guard turn England into real deal

Rudolf Straeuli's "go on, make my day" approach to South Africa's next meeting with England – Subiaco Oval, Perth, Western Australia, 327 days and counting – elicited a cute response from Clive Woodward. "I guess it wasn't the most helpful comment regarding world peace," smiled the red rose manager.

Woodward does have peace of mind, though. Three weeks of bruising, compelling, edge-of-the-seat Test activity have left England in an unprecedented state of grace and shaken the southern hemisphere to its rugby foundations.

Woodward knows the great powers of New Zealand and Australia, not forgetting the remnants of what used to be known as the Springboks, are shaken because he has spent the last 48 hours dodging a fusillade of barbed suggestions to the effect that, while his team are incapable of losing at Twickenham, they are every bit as incapable of winning anywhere south-east of the European mainland.

Asked yesterday whether he believed England would ever command the complete respect of their peers in Auckland, Sydney and Johannesburg, given that his clean sweep of autumn victories signally failed to secure it, he replied: "I don't necessarily want their complete respect. The criticisms of our game will never go away, because they are part and parcel of the history of English rugby. I don't take it personally: I'm just a custodian of the team, and whoever comes next can expect the same torrent of abuse. In fact, I take it as a compliment. If they're talking about you, it means you've got them thinking about you."

What the southern hemisphere thinks and what Woodward thinks are, if truth be told, one and the same thing. Yes, the All Blacks rolled back the frontiers of the possible and gave England a timely lesson in the art and science of attacking from deep; yes, a typically disciplined and resourceful Wallaby vintage wounded their hosts and forced them to reach deep within themselves for a one-point victory; yes, the Bokke asked some hard physical questions while snarling: "And there's more where that came from."

Yet England found a road to salvation on each occasion, and, for all the multi-decibel spin-doctoring now going on south of the equator, there is a rather quieter acknowledgment that these Twickenhamites are the real deal.

"We are a better team than we were three weeks ago," Woodward pronounced. "We took a step forward in Argentina during the summer, and we've maintained the momentum."

That performance in Buenos Aires, with only four first-choice players on the pitch, had a significant air to it at the time and can now be seen as a watershed fixture. Effectively, it gave England Lewis Moody, who looks handsomely equipped to mix it with the Joe van Niekerks and Reuben Thornes come the World Cup, and established Phil Vickery and Ben Kay as senior members of a tight five fit to place alongside the Leonard-Moore-Probyn-Ackford-Dooley unit of legend. It also ensured that an inexperienced wing like Phil Christophers could make early mistakes against South Africa without disappearing into his shell.

There is good news on the senior citizen front, too. Seven months ago in Rome, Woodward confined four of his many captains – Johnson, Jason Leonard, Lawrence Dallaglio and Matthew Dawson – to the bench, and, to the wailing of 30,000 "mamma mias", unleashed them simultaneously, 55 minutes into the game. None of the quartet had been remotely enchanted by their demotions, and there were many reports of their impending demise. Those reports were premature. Both Leonard and Dawson have just played their best rugby for at least a year (in Leonard's case, significantly more than a year) while Dallaglio recovered manfully from a one-paced performance against New Zealand to give the Boks a rare old hurry-up. And Johnson? On the evidence of last weekend, he remains the best lock in the world.

The emergence of Moody, Christophers, James Simpson-Daniel and Trevor Woodman, all of whom made first starts against major southern hemisphere opposition this month, means Woodward now has two-thirds of his 30-man World Cup squad clear in his mind. The other 10, including Iain Balshaw and Dan Luger among a group of long-term stretcher cases, will have to scrap their way back into the forefront of the manager's mind via the A team over a five-match series shadowing the Six Nations internationals between February and April.

As recently as last year, this would have been well nigh impossible: England have consistently made a pig's ear of A team rugby, to the extent that they lost their last game to a bunch of unrated Italians. But with the World Cup around the corner, Woodward is upping the ante. This season, the second-stringers will be brought under the wing of the senior coaching staff and will prepare alongside the first team. "The As have been left out on a limb in the past," the manager said. "It all comes under me from now on."

Those southern hemisphere types with eyes to see always feared that England might get it right one day, that the old farts of Twickenham might stumble upon the fact that there was as much talent sloshing around the shires as in the wide open spaces of the highveld of South Africa and the farmlands of New Zealand. That talent is finally on stream. Woodward believes he can sail that stream all the way to Stadium Australia a year from now.