The No10′s England career may be ending but Wilkinson has made a mighty contribution to English rugby
When Jonny Wilkinson left the pitch at Eden Park after 65 minutes’ play on Saturday, it was easy to conclude that he was walking into history. The most famous of England’s No10s will play the rest of his career in first-class club rugby for Toulon, his present employer, and in Sunday’s post-match press conference Rob Andrew seemed to be emphasising that the Rugby Football Union will now be enforcing its rule on selecting only home-based players for international duty, with no exceptions – even for greatness.
So the career statistics, which once arrived as an avalanche, may have come to a halt at 91 appearances, 79 of them in a starting role, and 1,179 points for England, plus 77 for the British & Irish Lions, despite an absence from Test rugby during the injury-ravaged seasons between 2003 and 2007 – a total of 1,246 points, still four behind Dan Carter. And, of course, there is Wilkinson’s World Cup winner’s medal.
It is tempting to see Wilkinson as the last of the line of traditional outside‑halves and Carter as the first of a new breed of flexible, multi-dimensional pivots. That would not do justice, however, to the Englishman, who always possessed a full range of expressive skills but whose willingness to give them full rein was often inhibited by his almost excessive work ethic and acceptance of responsibility.
He was at it again in the battle against France, making the hits and piling into the rucks like an extra flanker. At 32, however, that body is not quite the weapon of yesteryear, and there were missed tackles on blue shirts that would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.
Whatever the truth about Mike Tindall’s recovery from an arm injury, Martin Johnson found himself picking both Wilkinson and Toby Flood in the five‑eighth positions, something for which many had been calling, and amid his disappointment Johnson reflected on the positive aspects of his choice. “I think Toby and Jonny worked well,” he said on Sunday. “We got round them [France] a number of times. It wasn’t the case that we didn’t have enough invention on the field, or creativity on the field, or whatever words people like to use.”
As is his way, Johnson uttered the words “invention” and “creativity” with the barely concealed disdain of one who essentially believes that they come low on rugby’s list of priorities. Therein can be found the flaw that prevented England from playing much better in 2011 than had when he arrived in 2008, despite the arrival of several talented young players. Johnson simply does not believe in heads‑up rugby because, all his playing career, his work was done with his head down, and that remains the perspective from which he views the game.
Nevertheless Wilkinson left us with one or two reminders of his gifts, notably a sumptuous offload out of the back of his hand to Nick Easter shortly before half-time. A few seconds later, however, he was hurling a pass to the unmarked Chris Ashton not far from the French line; it came a fraction too high for the wing to hold at a moment when, as Johnson lamented, a try might have made a difference.
Half an hour earlier, in the immediate aftermath of Dimitri Yachvili’s opening penalty goal, there had been a dreadfully uncharacteristic false note when Wilkinson kicked the restart straight into touch, thus handing the initiative straight back to their opponents. If that made spectators rub their eyes, so did his missed tackle on Vincent Clerc in the 22nd minute, allowing the brilliant wing to spin between Ben Youngs and Ben Foden before touching down for the first of France’s two tries.
It will be no consolation to Wilkinson that he finished the match with a 100% kicking record: one conversion, duly kicked. That at least was an improvement on his mystifyingly abysmal performances with the boot in England’s pool games, in which he kicked eight but missed 10, while three drop‑goal attempts yielded only a single success.
When England beat France in the 2003 semi-final in Sydney, Wilkinson scored every one of his side’s 24 points, with five penalties and three drop goals. Four years later at the Stade de France he inflicted similar punishment, with nine of England’s 14 points from two penalties and a drop goal. His personal haul of two points on Saturday represents the extent of a decline that came a little earlier than he, Johnson and England would have hoped.
He had spoken before the match of how the “desperately empty” feeling of failure can be worse than the disappointment of not being selected at all. Afterwards, very unusually, he left the stadium without sharing his response to England’s departure from the tournament. It is painful to imagine this remarkable man, who managed to suppress his ego while touching the heights of self-fulfillment, lost in a bout of agonised introspection. But nothing that happened on Saturday night in Eden Park can diminish a career which defined itself on other nights, in other places.
Sport: Rugby World Cup 2011 | guardian.co.uk
