Life without Jonny

So farewell then, Jonny Wilkinson, for the next two months at least. Just when you thought it was safe to ignore this year’s Six Nations championship, the removal from the equation of rugby union’s most lethal and efficient kicker has suddenly made it a prospectively competitive spectacle again.

Wilkinson’s shoulder-related layoff will hardly matter to England this weekend against Italy, who probably have several more years to go before they can aspire to being anything more than punching-bags in a Six Nations context. But it will matter, to varying degrees, in the rest of England’s games — especially the final fixture (more of which anon).
Clive Woodward told the press last week that he was confident that England would have won the World Cup even without Martin Johnson and Wilkinson. Not for the first time in his tenure as England boss, Woodward, an extremely intelligent man, was talking pure bollocks.
They could well have won it without Johnson, but certainly not without Wilkinson. Remember, we are talking about the team that mustered a grand total of two tries in their final three World Cup games against Wales, France and Australia. Tot up the number of points Wilkinson kicked in those games, then replace him with a kicker who is, for the sake of argument, half as effective and misses as many shots as he converts. In other words, the standard of kicker that almost all other rugby-playing countries can boast. Had this happened, England would have been beaten in all three games, and the final against Australia would have been lost by some distance.
And while England usually do win their matches, how many times have you seen them win with flair and invention? The usual pattern for an England victory in the last few years, certainly against the other top sides, has been to rely on Wilkinson to score virtually all the points from dead-ball situations, with perhaps one try being contributed by someone like Jason Robinson or Will Greenwood. In virtually all their recent meetings with France, Australia and New Zealand, they have triumphed despite being well outscored on tries.
You can argue that, with Wilkinson there, England have not needed to play in a manner that produces plenty of tries against the best sides (though against the small fry, they score as many as anyone). Why should they exhaust themselves trying to get five points here, five points there, when their no 10 can contribute three every few minutes? But with him gone, a big rethink will be needed.
Unless something weird happens, like Ireland going stone mad and winning at Twickenham, England’s encounter with France will be the Grand Slam decider. The French, of course, do not have the services of their inspirational captain Fabien Galthié to call upon any more, but Wilkinson, along with Keith Wood, is probably the only player in the world who acts as a bigger talisman to his national side than Galthié.
Watching as England continually ground opponents into submission during the World Cup, one couldn’t help wondering, perhaps a little mean-spiritedly, if there was much more to them than a muscular pack and the best goal-kicker that rugby has ever seen. We’ll find out at the end of March.