Change of culture is needed to compete

"When rugby is part of the currency of life, it gives the Test team a priceless advantage" 

- CHRIS HEWETT

A slippery subject, rugby culture, and easily misrepresented in its narrowest sense. Across great swathes of the sporting landscape, the English variety is still a slave to cliché - swanky schools, hyphenated surnames, ritual debaggings at the beer-drenched bar and lewd songs about sexual peccadilloes - while the Australian version, which used to be framed in the image of Eales, Campese and the Ella brothers, now has the Eddie Jones imbroglio as its public face.

And in the wider sense? Here, we find ourselves on firmer ground. The deepest-rooted, most stable union cultures are undoubtedly to be found in South Africa and New Zealand. And guess what? Between them, these countries have triumphed in seven of the 10 World Cups to date, including all of the last five.

Sir Clive, Martin the Miserable, Jonny Whatsisname and their fellow Red Rosers did not seem like outliers back in 2003. Quite the opposite. England travelled to that tournament as the number one side in the sport and despite trying to prove that they weren't quite as good as everyone assumed, they lived up to the ranking. There was even talk of a paradigm shift, not least from senior Twickenham executives who spent the immediate aftermath of the final working out how much money might be generated off the back of it.