James Lawton: Wilkinson the forlorn symbol of a culture that has lost its way

In terms of wit and invention, this display was an announcement of bankruptcy

(GETTY IMAGES (LAWTON))

However profound a defeat, it rarely provokes the sense of a sports version of Doomsday. England's did in a way that had to include the wholly admirable Jonny Wilkinson among its casualties.

"He is a world-class player," coach Martin Johnson asserted for the umpteenth time but if that was true what did it make the 21-year-old Australian scrum half Will Genia? It turned him into an inhabitant of an entirely different and much superior planet.

Wilkinson was at times recognisably Wilkinson, most dramatically in one fleeting kick and chase cameo and tackled with all his old impact, but as a source of influence he was negligible, easily dominated by his opposite number Matt Giteau.

Yes, you could only see Wilkinson as a casualty rather than a potential saviour because what we had here was not just a division of ability and ambition but a terrible indictment of the English game.

But quite how do we categorise Wilkinson's victim status? It was of someone who was caught in a culture in which all of his best attributes were worth, well, next to nothing.

At the end he could be seen to be attempting to revive the spirits of a team which had been exposed as hopeless. He talked of the need for intensity but what had been required this day was not so much determination – an endless resource in Wilko's case – but the shedding of light.

England needed most desperately what they mostly plainly lacked: a little invention, a little cleverness, a little of that something which is nourished most profitably in sportsmen who, perhaps like the discarded Mathew Tait and the injured but also time-frozen Danny Cipriani, have a natural impulse to do something different – and maybe something quite exceptional.

England's potential for the exceptional, even when they enjoyed the lead in the first half and provoked a few giddily optimistic bars of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", never moved off zero. Their passing along the line was at best robotic, at worst pathetically flawed. When the Wallabies did stir themselves, it was as though they were playing a different game, one which had touches of invention, nuances beyond the reach of any Englishman. Genia showed flashes of penetration which came with an ease that must have been heart-breaking for opponents for whom such a single moment seemed beyond imitation.

Australia played with intermittent flair but most of what they did carried the sense of a team striving for something which was well within their powers. Against them was a team producing what almost amounted to anti-rugby, at least for anyone who believes in its potential for biting skill and hints of originality.

Johnson, the hero of the field whose aura as a coach remains so doggedly stillborn, will inevitably take most of the criticism but singling him out at this point of his ordeal smacks almost of cruelty. Complaints, surely, have to run a lot deeper and wider.

What we had, as England slid to defeat against an Australian team who were supposed to be in the middle of their own crisis with just one win in six games, was no ordinary failure. In terms of wit and imagination and momentum it was more an announcement of bankruptcy.

For a similar sense of futility you probably had to go back to a World Cup group game in Paris two years ago, when South Africa picked effortlessly among the ruins of the reigning champions.

We can now see more clearly than ever that the subsequent England rally that carried them to the final in the same stadium, and had a desperately underperforming Australia as its victims in Marseilles, was merely delaying a statement of the obvious. It came, as bleakly as anyone could have imagined, this last weekend.

Johnson cannot complain now that he has to take the flak which is bound to grow in intensity. He prides himself on his hard-headedness and he took the challenge with wide open eyes. All you can really say on his behalf is that the poverty of his resources has been revealed so quickly, so dispiritingly, he must feel he has been condemned to a waking nightmare.

However, it is also the Rugby Union's nightmare. They cut away Johnson's predecessor Brian Ashton, who at least had that World Cup final appearance as a defence against the worst of the criticism, in the shoddiest of circumstances. They brought in Johnson in the naïve belief that his heroic status would somehow allow him to batter down the rising scepticism about England's long-term prospects. And now the RFU have to face the consequences of the tortured reality they have imposed: a coach of no experience and unravelling mystique, and a team leaden in its inability to be inspired.

If you are tempted to suspect over-reaction, and say that an 18-9 defeat against the third ranked rugby nation, was not so disastrous, put such thoughts aside. There are many ways to illuminate quite how wretched a performance it was, and not the least is the fact that England's best player, by a distance, was Lewis Moody. The flanker did superb work while fighting for the ball against heavy odds, but unfortunately when he had possession he seemed to share the belief of his team-mates that it had the volatility of a hand-grenade without the pin.

England need so much more than a few brilliantly committed marauders. They need a new generation of players who bring them a certain swagger of self-belief, a relish for expression at the highest level of the game. Rob Andrew, the director of elite rugby, tells us that such a generation has been on the production line for some time.

After this performance, it is a boast that is in desperate need of substance. Until a little arrives, the conclusion has to be starkly different. It is that English rugby is in a state of freefall. Martin Johnson, conveniently, is in the dock now, but it is one that may not always be so under-populated. At Twickenham we surely had to fear a whole nation's game had lost its way.