WILL GENIA is 21 years old and already capped eight times as a scrum-half for Australia. Yesterday, he delivered a man-of-the-match performance against England and in the process taught not only his opposing players but the opposition management a brutal lesson in the art of international rugby.
Pitched into this season's Tri-Nations, Genia is developing at such a rate that come the 2011 World Cup he is going to be one of the outstanding pivots in the world game. England - in contrast - remain hamstrung by an obsession with experience driven by a fear of losing.
Australia may have lost six of their past seven internationals (against New Zealand and South Africa) but coach Robbie Deans has continued to trust kids such as Genia and the almost equally impressive Quade Cooper with the task of moulding a mature and match-winning team, and most pertinently, a team capable of competing in 2011 because, whatever anybody claims, this is the yardstick by which international sides are judged.
Australia are as determined a race of sporting winners as any nation on this planet but they are not afraid to lose. Week by week, England's management are wasting the future as they trust experience over potential. When experience leaves a team as dynamic as a sack of potatoes, questions have to be screamed from the rooftops of the West Stand.
Stunningly, Martin Johnson claimed post-match that lack of dynamism was not a problem. Well, it wasn't for the younger Australian team in the second half but for England the excuse borders on the hilarious if it wasn't so sad for an English audience.
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It is not as if England lack players with explosive capacity. The problem is that these characters are young and inexperienced. And England seem petrified of inexperience.
The most obvious problem was the lack of deception behind the scrum. This was a team set out to run wide but running wide and running witlessly are not related. To put width on the ball and test defences as organised as Australia's, somebody - or bodies - are required to hold defences infield and turn the wide defenders towards the forwards to create the space that players such as Shane Geraghty need.
England are stuck. They want to play at the sort of pace Australia can create but they are scared to trust young players for fear of what might go wrong. Genia did plenty wrong in the early days of his career but with each minute he is growing into a superior performer.
I would love to say it is time for England to change the philosophy if they want to find a suitable tempo but alas that time has already passed us by.
Solid as Steve Thompson was in the set-piece he had nothing of the fire and fury Dylan Hartley possessed and showed in the final quarter of the match. In the back five of the pack Steve Borthwick, Louis Deacon and Jordan Crane have an absence of dynamic snap. The balance is bad. If Borthwick has to start then surely England should throw Courtney Lawes into the fray. The 20-year-old is regarded as being too young but if he is the man to add some punch as a ball carrier why not pick him and if he makes an error (even, God forbid, a match-losing one) then so be it; short-term pain for long-term gain. At No 8 James Haskell simply has to start - to inject the sort of venom from the base that the solid, safe Crane will not.
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It is all about balance and England lack it; there was an absence on the field but the greatest concern is the decision making off the field.
Martin Johnson sought excuses and claimed England were a young team. The Wallabies were a younger team across the board but they are learning while English forward play atrophies. Johnson may have been a great captain - no, he was - but still he appears to be drowning rather than waving to a Twickenham crowd who will soon forget the World Cup final on November 22, 2003. With that date lost in the mists of time questions will and should be asked.
If inexperience is crippling England anywhere it is not on the playing side but the managerial one. Johnson needs a contrary older head to challenge some of his innately conservative thinking but instead he is surrounded by former Leicester mates, Jon Callard and Brian Smith. Maybe Brian Ashton was not a natural manager but he knows more about the game than all the coaches that survived the axe Johnson sharpened.
For all the vast courage of Johnson as a player there is a depressing conservatism and fear in the way in which England build from one game to the next. I have no doubt that the Argentina match is the game in which several younger and more explosive performers should start but don't be surprised if England tinker at best. It is not just the players whose places should be debated.