England's quiet man now forced to talk a good game

Hill must make his voice heard in new role as 'defensive captain' in the first autumn Test against New Zealand tomorrow

Richard Hill has been all things to all men for almost exactly five years now: an open-side flanker good enough to have made three consecutive winning Lions Test appearances in the red seven shirt – a feat equalled only by the famed and feared Irishman, Fergus Slattery; a blind-side operator of such iron discipline that he has worn six for England on 25 occasions, losing only half a dozen times; and a No 8 capable of papering over the cracks left by Lawrence Dallaglio during the former captain's many and varied entanglements with consultant surgeons and tabloid news-hounds.

All things, that is, except a leader – at least, a leader of the shouting, hollering, sergeant-majorish variety. The 29-year-old Saracen has been, on his own admittance, a reluctant talker on the field, generally for very good reasons. Dallaglio, Martin Johnson and Phil Vickery can all perform striking impersonations of Jonathan Ross on helium: Johnson ear-bashes referees for a pastime, and when Dallaglio and Vickery met in the Premiership the other week, they swapped enough words to fill a thesaurus. With Matthew Dawson and Austin Healey going 20 to the dozen out in the backs, quiet sorts like Hill have struggled to make themselves heard above the din, even when they felt they had something to contribute.

But silence is a privilege to which Hill is no longer entitled, thanks to the demotion of Neil Back and his own promotion to "defensive captain" – the England hierarchy's grand name for the man in charge of the forwards' tackle count. Beginning against the All Blacks at Twickenham tomorrow (why start at the village hall when you can hit the Palladium straight away?), Salisbury's finest must chivvy and cajole and demand. In short, he must bring his personality to bear on proceedings, rather than go about his business with the kind of quiet determination recommended by the current leader of the Conservative Party.

"I'm not much of a yapper, it's true," Hill admitted this week after an early-morning training run at the England team's baronial, and hugely expensive, headquarters just outside Bagshot. "If you look at the team that has developed since Clive Woodward took charge in '97, one of the first things you notice is the number of natural leaders – key players in key positions to whom running the system comes easily. I suppose I've been a senior player for a while now, but I've rarely felt the need to add my voice to those already there.

"Is it different now that Neil is on the bench? Perhaps. I would like to think that defensively, this is a well-oiled machine. We put hours of work into this aspect of our game and everyone involved understands their role. A large part of my responsibility is to ensure we are 100 per cent prepared, and that is done on the training field. And Neil is still there in training, doing the things he's always done, so to that extent, it has been a fairly easy transition. Match day will be something else though and if things need saying, I suppose I'm the one who will have to say them."

Hill wins his 50th cap tomorrow, and Wayne Shelford, the former All Black loose forward and captain who coaches him at Saracens, describes him as being "right up there" alongside Paul Henderson and the great Michael Jones, two New Zealand open-side specialists of his own vintage. "Richard reads the play well, he understands his own game and the body language of other players around him," Shelford said recently. "He very rarely misses a tackle, he knows his lines, he has agility and speed at the breakdown, has good size and carries his bulk well. The intensity he plays at is high for the whole game, and he has the head for the seven position." Some panegyric, given Shelford's instinctive reluctance to give any Englishman an even break.

It is not the first tribute Hill has attracted from the southern hemisphere. Last year, he received an equally heartfelt, if less palatable, accolade when the Wallabies, sick to the back teeth of seeing the Lions flanker out-flanking their own George Smith, decided to get rid of him by fair means or foul. Foul suited them best. Nathan Grey, the New South Wales centre, caught Hill with a barely detectable elbow to the side of the head – a masterpiece of split-second cynical timing – and that was the last the Lions saw of their most effective back-rower. A game and a half later, they had lost the series.

Like most of his colleagues, Hill argues that the physicality of professional rugby is way beyond anything anyone experienced as an amateur: the garish purple patchwork of stitch marks smack in the middle of his forehead, the result of an entirely innocent collision during last month's Premiership match with Leicester, underlines the fact that this union business is quite hard enough thank you, without contributions from the likes of Grey.

"In the summer, I had five weeks off – five weeks of wonderful, blissful nothingness," he said. "The last time I experienced luxury like it was in the spring of 1998, when I had an operation on my back and couldn't move. Just at the moment, I feel good about my form: my game is built around a very high work-rate and a tackle-count of 15-plus in a competitive fixture – aggressive tackles, not passive ones. You can't do that 10 months a year, every year, and that is why the players, through the offices of the Professional Rugby Players' Association, are fighting for the 11-week off-season. In my opinion, it is absolutely crucial we win that fight."

Tomorrow, he goes toe to toe with opponents more familiar with sensible, well-managed breaks, players who are not flogged from pillar to post like packhorses. Some of them – Taine Randell and Kees Meeuws up front, Tana Umaga and Jonah Whatsisname in the backs – are old foe. Others, the Marty Holahs and Andrew Hores and Sam Broomhalls, could stand next to Hill in the bar and order a beer without fear of adding to their round. What does the 50-capper expect from a side with such a high rookie quotient?

"Exactly what I would expect from any All Black side," he replied. "We will encounter a team from a country where rugby is the overriding sporting passion, where pride runs deep, where the do-or-die spirit is as strong as it is anywhere in the rugby world, where honour counts for everything. I cannot imagine 15 players in black shirts shirking their responsibilities, can you?"

Absolutely. But will New Zealand pride, New Zealand honour, run deeper than the English versions? Will there be more red corpuscles inside the black shirts than in the white ones?

"I'd like to think not," Hill said. "I don't think it matters more to them than it does to us. Why should it? We are a very determined group of players who have been together a long while and who have set standards down the years, standards we expect to meet irrespective of the opposition. The All Blacks are honest players, but no more honest than us. I think this will be a memorable Test match."