Chris Hewett: Folk up north have some serious issues

The knight of the realm could not resist it.

"I'd like to caution a warning to New Zealand rugby," said Sir Clive Woodward, speaking in the tones of a coach who had just won a series rather than lost it by a three-test tally of 107-40.

"You should be reflective, because things can change very quickly. The only true judgment of a team is at a World Cup, where everyone turns up properly fit and prepared and the games take place on a level playing field. There is no gulf between hemispheres. Who holds the World Cup at the moment?"

Fighting talk? Definitely. But Woodward is not the one who will be doing the fighting when the All Blacks pitch up in London in November and in France in 2007. He will be exploring other avenues, thinking outside other squares and infuriating other people with his extraordinary mix of personal charm and public tactlessness. Sir Lancelot Spratt (retired), as he has been nicknamed by the British media troupe, will be running Southampton Football Club or the British Rollerblading Society or the English Mud Wrestling Association.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Woodward can say what he likes because it is others who will face the consequences. The Andy Robinsons and Eddie O'Sullivans of this world are the ones charged with carrying on regardless in the face of this supremely potent New Zealand vintage, most of whom will be somewhere near their prime come the next World Cup and while both Robinson and O'Sullivan are big and ugly enough to look after themselves, they could probably do without too many outbursts of the kind we heard in the bowels of Eden Park on Saturday night.

Privately, they will be thinking deep thoughts. They will be trying to understand how it was that the Lions failed to fire a single meaningful shot during the test series, that they failed to produce a single performance that truly caught the imagination of the New Zealand public.

Ryan Jones against Otago? The boy did good, as they say in soccer. But in the final analysis, the lank-haired No 8 from Wales brought energy and dynamism to the mix, not a mind-blowing range of skills undreamed of in Otago.

Robinson and O'Sullivan, the coaches of England and Ireland respectively, will also be weighing the words of Graham Henry, who spoke cleverly and cogently yesterday about the shift in the game since England kicked their way to the Webb Ellis Cup in Sydney 20 months ago. The All Blacks coach suggested that the old-style rugby as practised by Martin Johnson, Neil Back and the rest of the white-shirted rogues' gallery was now dead meat.

The move towards a flexible, multi-dimensional attacking game had become irrevocable.

If Henry is right - and who in their right minds will tell him he's wrong, having watched three utterly one-sided tests? - the folk up north have some serious issues on their agenda.

France can play every which way, always assuming they decide to turn up and Wales are developing a fast-handling style of rugby designed to maximise the potential of a new generation of creative footballers. But England? Ireland? Can they play the new rugby?

More to the point, do they really want to play it? As the All Blacks have demonstrated to anyone blessed with a pair of eyes, there are no half measures here. Unless everyone buys into the strategy, the strategy is not worth a light. England have Josh Lewsey and Charlie Hodgson, Ireland have Brian O'Driscoll and Geordan Murphy.

It's a start, of sorts. But the end is so far down the road as to border on the invisible.

* Chris Hewett is a rugby writer for the Independent in London