INTERNATIONAL rugby is said to be a brutal world. So here is a brutal question. England's players are together for long tranches of the season and the question is this: Are they improving when they are together with Martin Johnson and his coaching group, or are they declining? Yesterday at Twickenham, to me, there was very little evidence that some of the England players had actually met before, let alone that they had been training together for the past two weeks.
Training time is the eternal quest for national rugby coaches. These days, England pay lots of money to their clubs for interminable player release, something that considerably disrupts the club season. No one ever seems to grasp that it would sometimes be better to send the players home for a cup of tea rather than beast them out on the training paddock yet again, rather than keeping them together when boredom and staleness are deadly dangers.
They have been together for well over a year, but we have to ask exactly what Martin Johnson's coaching group is achieving. If you go on England's performances, then there is absolutely no evidence that the group are meshing, that two men of wildly clashing philosophies - forwards coach John Wells and attack coach Brian Smith - are on their wavelength. There is no evidence that Mike Ford, the defence coach, is building an impregnable wall. Nor is there evidence that Johnson himself is cracking the whip. I am sure that he is doing so, and would not expect him to admit it in his media conferences. But anyone can sit there looking dangerous in a suit. The Johnson I admired to the bottom of his studs - and these days, to the soles of his loafers - has all but disappeared into the same morass as his players.
Take England's attack. I understand that occasionally, a lumpy forward has to take the ball into contact to drag in the defenders. I understand that slow ball cannot be shunted across the back division and that every now and again at ruck time, the forwards have to gather themselves and prepare to drive up on a narrow front to create quick ball.
But this England team has no idea what it is meant to be, what its strengths are, what its go-to areas are, what weaknesses it must mask. It has no idea where its soul is or who its pillars are. And even given the exigencies of international rugby, there is no excuse for the dreadful lack of dynamism and quick ball inherent in the team's display yesterday, and there is no excuse for the coaches not to take full responsibility.
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Let us examine the final 20 minutes when England finally decided that they had to up the pace. Leave aside the individual blundering and the ringing of panic stations. Just look at their policy. They shunted the ball laterally across the field and back, submerging the ball in contact for long seconds if things broke down. It was ponderous and old-fashioned, as well as being a waste of valuable time.
Remember the Lions? They may have lost, thanks to outrageous misfortunes. But they attacked brilliantly and were set up effectively in line astern rather than line abreast. The ball carrier would have players on each shoulder but also players behind him, ready to drive in to play through the contact area, and to drive into the ruck only as the last resort. The Lions made scores of clean line breaks, they were in a different universe in terms of attack than the poor England team yesterday. Smith clearly had a gauntlet which he could have picked up, a Lions legacy he could have used, but on the evidence of yesterday, he has ignored it. It would help him if the profoundly conservative Johnson-Wells axis would raise its horizons - or even better, if England made Ian McGeechan their head coach this morning.
The beauty of this autumn international series from the point of view of Johnson and his beleaguered coaching group, is that there is always some kind of excuse, first they can say that they have a lot to work on and they expect to be better next week.
If they should lose to Argentina on Saturday, they can always set great store on recovering the season against New Zealand. If and when they lose to New Zealand, they can point to the excellence of the opposition. There has to be a point when they are held to account, and if that point is in the middle of the autumn series, then so be it. Apart from one half of sublime play against France last season, England have been dire, and completely lacking in tactical and technical shape, for a long, long time.
Nor will there be excuses against Argentina. These Pumas are not the giants of the 2007 World Cup when they beat France, slaughtered Ireland then beat France again in the third-place playoff with the greatest display of the whole tournament bar none.
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Their magnificent front five is almost intact and Patricio Albacete is one of five forwards in their pack fit to be regarded amongst the greatest in the modern game. But this is not the World Cup. For a start, their two controllers, the sublime genius Juan Martin Fernandez and the steely Felipe Contempomi are injured, robbing the team of its heart and soul.
And as ever, the Pumas preparation has been sketchy to say the least. For their three-match series against England, Wales and Scotland, they arrive only tomorrow from all over Europe and South America - six of their squad play in England, 14 in France, one in Italy and eight in Argentina's amateur domestic game. They will have only two meaningful training sessions, top whack.
But wait a minute. I wonder whether that is all a bad thing. Many an ex-international player, including some of the most famous of the era, have spoken feelingly about the endless international build-up, the need to stay awake at meetings and general blab-fests, the need to look interested throughout the latest DVD ceremony. Maybe the Pumas will come out fresh and firing, and maybe their lack of preparation time will mean that they play it off the cuff, play it with wisdom and freshness; play it exactly like England didn't yesterday.
The great mantra of some is that winning is not everything, that a fine performance and evidence of future excellence is as significant. Rubbish, of course. But yesterday, we had neither a result nor a performance. It cannot happen again. England's training sessions traditionally take place behind closed doors, with all kinds of security.
But unless Johnson and his coaching group give this team some direction and some shape, we will be forced to conclude that behind those closed doors, nothing whatsoever is happening.