Wilkinson the key for Woodward's would-be champions

The ecstasy of England's November campaign is plain enough. But then so is an agony that is unlikely to be dispelled by a third and climactic victory over the southern hemisphere when the transitional Springboks are dragged, like the All Blacks and Australia before them, to the sacrificial altar of Middle England at Twickenham this afternoon.

It is a pain which runs just below a glorious surface and, if we are honest, it can be compressed into one huge question, and one very significant supplementary.

The question is whether the English can really play rugby. Play it, that is, in the way of an an All Black or a Wallaby or a Springbok on his good day, or as a Welshman used to do, or the French still do when the moon and the stars are properly aligned.

We are not asking whether the English can master certain aspects of it with the force of a wrecking ball. We know they can do that well enough. But can they explore the limits of their potential, can they step beyond the suspicion that at pivotal moments of their development as a potentially world-beating team they will be trapped in a national rugby character which is worthy but also essentially dull?

The supplementary enquiry is directed at England's best player, Jonny Wilkinson, and is put most hauntingly by his admirer, the great Welsh No 10 Jonathan Davies. "Will there be a day when Jonny says: 'Oh, bollocks to it: I'm the best in the world and I'm going to bloody prove it – and enjoy every minute of it?'" asks Davies.

"I felt England could have won the last World Cup if they had believed in themselves a bit more, and I think they can win the next one. But Jonny is the key. Without a shadow of a doubt, he is the best outside-half in the world. Sometimes he shows it, sometimes he doesn't – and when he doesn't England are terribly diminished. I think quite a bit of it is in his mind."

Few coaches and teams can have been put on quite such an unforgiving anvil of analysis as Clive Woodward's England, but the head coach cannot complain too much because from the dawn of his reign he has set up World Cup performance as the defining factor in all his work. If the tournament has become a monster dominating every phase of the rugby cycle, Woodward has made his contribution to the oppressive climate. And now, at the end of three weeks which on the old calendar would have represented a crusade of supreme achievement, he can only hope for an effort of more consistent weight than the ones which produced such ultimately spectacular victories over the Tri-Nation champions, New Zealand, and the World Cup holders, Australia.

When the French empire was crumbling back in the 1950s, the nation was insulted by the suggestion that they had lost the will to fight. They then produced the epic defence of Dien Bien Phu, which prompted Reader's Digest to run an article headed: "Who said the French can't fight?" Next year's World Cup is Woodward's Dien Bien Phu, the one theatre where his team can provoke the vindicating headline: "Who said the English can't play rugby?"

In the meantime, English rugby can assert great names of most of our lifetimes: Peter Jackson and Geoff Butterfield and Jeremy Guscott, threequarters of wonderful talent and, in Guscott's case, a dreamy potential to perform the exquisite; David Duckham was a thrilling wing; Peter Winterbottom a flanker of the highest class; and today Martin Johnson marches on as a living example of English-bred forward power. But over the past 30 or 40 years, how many English players would have blazed automatically into a World XV? The answer is bleak until we reach Wilkinson, but even here there has to be an element of apprehension about the possibility of a Lost Chord – or a missing gene.

It is here that Davies, an authentic member of the great Welsh outside-half tradition of Cliff Morgan, Dai Watkins, Barry John and Phil Bennett, becomes the most vital of witnesses. He loves the authority of Wilkinson when he is at his best; he was thrilled by the vision which came when he chipped over a New Zealand defender and ran in a try of shattering force two weeks ago, but he wants more. He wants all the technical brilliance – and a surge of the blood. No, that is not all. He wants arrogance. He wants a scream of exhilaration.

He says: "England are quite difficult to analyse and the big reason for this, in my opinion, is Jonny Wilkinson. He's a secretive guy and while there's nothing wrong with this – some of the greatest performers are private people – you do have to develop an aura on the field.

"The truth is that in pure rugby terms Jonny is a lot bigger than his aura, and sometimes I think this rubs off on England. Like him, they are a lot better than they sometimes seem to realise. Sometimes I would like to see him a lot more creative and confident in what he can do, because when he isn't creative England can look a bit lost.

"It's no good being unbeatable at Twickenham, you have to travel anywhere in the world believing that you're the best. England have worked very hard over the last few years and they have great coaching back-up but sometimes I think some of the approach is a bit too schoolmasterly. They seem to go in for quite a bit of psychology. Well, sometimes none of that stuff works as well as a bit of nous and a bit of arrogance.

"No 10s need arrogance more than anyone else. They have to go out there believing that they will shape the game. I'm told Jonny doesn't put in quite the number of hours he used to on the practice field and that he works over shorter periods but more creatively and technically, and that is very good. Now, after beating the All Blacks and Australia, England should be on a high. They should make a statement about themselves at the end of three great weeks and Wilkinson, above all, is the man to make it."

What Davies is saying most persuasively, no doubt, is that great teams are made by the dominating influence of a great player. He wants from Wilkinson the "arrogance and pomp" that Maradona displayed when he carried Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup, one of the most astounding acts of leadership in the history of team sport.

Some in English rugby may rail against such demanding criteria, especially when it comes from a currently broken rugby nation. But Jonathan Davies had no part in that Welsh decline. He left for rugby league long after the enemy were within the gates and he had proclaimed that a Welshman could still play the game like a god. That now is the burden on possibly the greatest English rugby player of all time.

Doubtless Wilkinson has the beating of some unfamiliar Springboks. But he has to do a lot more than that and it is nobody's fault but his own. The pressure he has applied to himself is no less than his own intimation of greatness – and the possibility that he might indeed beat the world.