James Lawton: Warrior Wilkinson climbs back off the canvas ready to deliver knockout blow

No doubt Andy Farrell, like everyone else in English rugby, is aware of the meaning of Jonny Wilkinson. If his body is a lattice-work of wounds, his will remains implacable. However, this apparently did not prevent concern crossing Farrell's normally uncomplicated face when his new, and miraculously restored, team-mate against Scotland at Twickenham today reminded the nation that when compared to one of his streams of consciousness, three hours of Kierkegaard or Nietzsche can seem like the musings of Terry Wogan.

Farrell, whose sheer talent persuades some that he is the more likely catalyst of England's revival under the bold urgings of the new coach Brian Ashton, might just still worry that the man who delivered the World Cup in 2003 is in danger of disappearing somewhere down his own labyrinth.

But he shouldn't. When set against some of his philosophical asides before meeting all those expectations in Australia, Wilko's elevation of mind over his own extremely vulnerable matter this week has been a model of simple logic.

Certainly he suggested that more than three years of unremitting frustration, and much physical pain, since the moment of his greatest triumph has left him a wiser man - and that it would be rather staggering if, so far down the road, it had not.

The journey to such equilibrium had a distinctly halting start. Here, for example, was the way Wilkinson expressed his central dilemma a few hours before the World Cup quarter-final against Wales in Brisbane: "You realise that whereas if you want to do everything you possibly can, and you want to think about it every single minute of the day, because it makes you feel strong and ready, you also realise by doing so it does also push you closer to doing something counter-productive, to what actually becomes a strain on yourself."

An even greater strain than that imposed by a thought process apparently encased in re-inforced concrete, was of course his eagerness to collide at full tilt with some of the biggest, hardest men in the world. It was already a full-blown tendency which persuaded his mentor Rob Andrew that England's chances of landing the great prize hung not so much on Wilkinson's talent, which is not the most creative rugby has seen but in terms of organising and driving a team is no less awesome for that, but his ability to get out of Australia without the help of a crack team of medical attendants.

Said Andrew back then: "Jonny Wilkinson is ready to win the World Cup for England on one condition - that he stays in one piece." Andrew might have been speaking this morning and going to the heart of one of the most intriguing Six Nations tournaments since Italy tagged on behind Wales, Scotland and Ireland - nations which, but for an occasional spurt of virtuosity, or passion, seemed doomed to futility beneath the might of England and against the inventions of France.

Now even the Italians stir promisingly under the prompting of the tough-minded Frenchman Pierre Berbizier and the favourites, Ireland, are urged to a new state of mind by their brilliant captain, Brian O'Driscoll, one filled with arrogance.

Says O'Driscoll: "Perhaps we will now be given more respect from teams. We've got to play with that confidence and element of arrogance that is expected of you when you have put in some good performances." Irish arrogance, starting tomorrow against a Wales stripped of an entire three-quarter line and former captain Gareth Thomas, would certainly represent full circle.

Four years ago, on their way to Wilko's climactic moment in the Telstra Stadium in Sydney, England filled Lansdowne Road with so much of it that captain Martin Johnson told embarrassed officials that there was no way he would move his team to accommodate the pre-game presentation ceremonials conducted by the Irish president Mary Robinson.

Lawrence Dallaglio bellowed the national anthem so hard he seemed in danger of bursting a vein, and then almost immediately scored a try. England were the most robust of machines then and they slaughtered an Ireland who had been dreaming, evidently with slender conviction, of a first Grand Slam since the days of the great Jackie Kyle.

Ashton would give much for even hints of such bullish English authority today and the suspicion has to be that he will get them. In bringing back the physically fragile Wilkinson, the still adapting rugby league titan Farrell and a Jason Robinson whose performances for Sale this season have sometimes been so low on penetration that some worry he, too, is nearing the end of his physical resources, Ashton is of course juggling a whole set of intangibles. But then sometimes in sport the alternative to gambling is to lie back and accept the most unpromising fate.

Ashton's was to inherit an England team who had lost eight of their nine previous matches and had shed so much of the drive and practical motivation that the despairing Andy Robinson, who had played a significant part in injecting such qualities as Sir Clive Woodward's top coach on the way to the World Cup, appeared to be one of the last to understand that his job had become less a challenge than an ordeal with an ending that had to be, soon enough, as much a mercy as humiliation.

The new coach's response in a way is as practical as it is daring. It is a measuring of odds which will depend heavily this afternoon on the so far muted, but, we can be certain, still fierce ambition of Scotland's open-side flanker Kelly Brown to throw himself at Wilkinson at the first opportunity.

"Just because he has had injuries in the past," says Brown, "doesn't mean I'm going to give him special treatment - that's just not my style. So if I get the chance to smash him, then I will - but I'm not specifically going out there to target doing that."

This is unlikely to spread much reassurance in the England dressing-room, which will be aware, like every other corner of Twickenham, that Wilkinson's ability - or not - to avoid the most damaging attention, however objectively it is stimulated, will be the most compelling drama of the afternoon, right up to the point when Wilkinson leaves the field, hopefully unaided and after providing England with the mortar-shell kicking which made him such a huge part of the World Cup strategy.

Farrell and Robinson offer other possibilities, of course. Farrell is a game breaker of both subtlety and power. He doesn't have to work on arrogance at anyone's bidding. It is inherent in the sweep of his game. Robinson needs a current of the old electricity and if it comes, the Scots, for all the defiant splendour of their ambush in Murrayfield last year, could quickly find themselves undermined. Certainly the bookmakers believe so, installing England as 1-8 favourites in reaction to the fervour of English belief that somehow Ashton has wiped away three years of decline by declaring his faith in superior, if seriously waylaid, talent.

Of course he hasn't, even though some of the cheerleading this week has taken us straight back to Trafalgar Square and Downing Street drenched in the hubris of 2003.

What he has done, and the sponsors of the Six Nations tournament must be deeply in his debt, is introduce the grandest sports theme of all to a prospect that was already enthralling. It is the eternally fascinating potential of the comeback, of the old champion re-entering the ring and seeking to conjure some of the best of himself. If Wilkinson can do this for a substantial part of today's game, if Farrell can unfurl some of his best attacking instincts, if Robinson can find some of the old sweet and dazzling rhythm, England will no longer look the sick men of international rugby.

But then will it make them enough of a team to render stillborn the arrogance that the great O' Driscoll craves? Almost certainly not. Ireland are more than a collection of compelling talent. They are a well-forged team transparently good enough to win the Six Nations and perhaps even ask a few questions of New Zealand at the World Cup. Not too many, however. The World Cup is a different competition and the favourites, we shouldn't forget on a day of genuine excitement, occupy a different planet.