Game of musical chairs would leave Tindall without a seat

There were two mistakes at the end of this column last week. One was to place the France v New Zealand match in Marseilles rather than in Paris. The other was to write that France's new outside half, François Gelez, was as reliable a kicker as Jonny Wilkinson. "If not more so,'' I added foolishly. On last Saturday's evidence from Twickenham, it is impossible to be more reliable than Wilkinson. And on the evidence from Paris, Gelez is like a famous claret. Most of the time it is marvellous, but occasionally a bottle can let you down badly.

It is not to depreciate Wilkinson to point out that, over the past 30 years, England have fielded some superb place-kickers: Dusty Hare, Simon Hodgkinson, Jonathan Webb and Rob Andrew. Whether their overall records will turn out to be as good as Wilkinson's we shall know in a decade or so, or whenever he puts his practice balls in the cupboard under the stairs.

Perhaps we shall never know precisely, for rugby is abysmal at providing statistics, even when they are available quite easily. I do not include the modern "stats'' of tackles made, line-outs won and suchlike, in which coaches seem to place such faith and which, when I have tried to keep count, turn out to be wholly unreliable. Goal-scoring strike rates are, by contrast, indisputable. But the record books supply total points rather than percentage successes.

It is, as we know, salacious to add up the points missed by a losing side through failed penalties and conversions, then to conclude that, if the kicks had been successful, that side would have won. The match would not have taken the course it did if those kicks had not failed. Yes, indeed; true enough. Even so, it is not at all fanciful to claim that if Matt Burke had shown his usual kicking form, Australia would have won on Saturday. He did, after all, miss a penalty in the closing minutes which he would normally have kicked.

Likewise, in the Paris match, Gelez missed not one but two penalties during a short period at the end of the game when even New Zealand would have been hard put to it to make a recovery. On the first occasion, the ball fell over during his run-up; he tried to take a tap penalty instead; but the referee ordered a scrum. On the second occasion, seconds from time, Gelez took the kick and, clearly nervous, sent the ball to the left of the posts. If Wilkinson had been playing for Australia or for France, they would both have won.

His place, at any rate, is secure. So also are the places of most of the forwards. It will be interesting to see whether Clive Woodward, the England manager, perseveres with Jason Leonard, who seemed to be skipping round the field as nimbly as any England loose-head prop since Mike Coulman.

About the backs there seems to be what Victorian politicians used to call a "hum'', a fashionable cry of the moment: in this case, to move Jason Robinson from full-back to his original position of wing and to play the now sadly incapacitated James Simpson-Daniel at centre. Tim Stimpson, Matt Perry or, if fit, Iain Balshaw could then come in at full-back. There is also a recovered Dan Luger to be borne in mind.

In these musical chairs the player left without a chair is Mike Tindall, poor chap, who is variously described as pedestrian, unsubtle and ordinary. It is interesting, by the way, that Gerald Davies, a player who was similar to (though greater than) Simpson-Daniel, fought a successful battle at the beginning of his career to be considered a wing rather than a centre, which is where the Welsh authorities of the time wanted to play him.

At all events, these stirring matters were being discussed on Sunday on television after the Ireland v Fiji match. The participants were Jonathan Davies and Matt Dawson with John Inverdale in the chair. Davies volunteered that Robinson was the best wing in the world and that England should play him in that position. Better than Doug Howlett? Or Ben Cohen? I wonder. Still, Davies would have Simpson-Daniel inside him in the England threequarter line.

This was all good speculative stuff which commentators and columnists regularly go in for and which keeps saloon bars warm on wet, weekday, winter evenings. Inverdale then asked Dawson what his opinion was of these proposed changes. Dawson I have tended to regard as a cut-price version of Austin Healey, always prepared to have a go, whether on the field or, preferably, in print. Inverdale is more than a pretty face. He knows quite a lot about rugby.

But what sort of response did he expect from the scrum-half? Dawson is a member of the team. He said that Tindall was a good man to have behind you, a veritable rock. I am sure this is Dawson's view. He also knows that Woodward is the only member of the present set-up who is allowed to express an opinion on TV.