Paul Thomas: The general has fought his last war

Amidst the post-mortems on the most expensive disaster since the disintegration of the space shuttle, this column will boldly go where no sensible person would think of going and endeavour to salvage something from the wreckage.

While, pitifully, not a single one of the Lions' 50-odd players will linger in the memory, Sir Clive Woodward can be added to the roll-call of fools, jesters, sad clowns, eccentrics and overgrown schoolboys who have weaved the incomparably rich tapestry of British humour.

Like the current crop of All Blacks, Woodward carries a torch lit by those who've gone before him. One can, for instance, easily imagine him in the Kenneth Williams role in a Carry On film - Carry On Making A Complete Arse Of Yourself perhaps.

There's also a hint of the puffed-up Captain Mainwaring from the television series Dad's Army. Just as Mainwaring had the excitable Lance Corporal Jones with his gleeful catch-cry "They don't like it up 'em," Woodward had the equally monomaniac Stephen Jones to assure him that New Zealand's effete forwards would turn to jelly when confronted with cold British steel.

Woodward's denial and incredible shrinking reputation recall the Black Knight in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

"Tis but a scratch," says the Black Knight, after having an arm hacked off in a sword fight. "A flesh wound," he harrumphs on parting company with the other arm. "I'm invincible," he crows on becoming a quadruple amputee. "All right," he hollers when his exasperated opponent can't be bothered continuing, "let's make it a draw."

Woodward's revelation that if he had his time over again, he'd bring as many as 70 players and play three games a week is straight out of the addled alternative reality of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, the upper-class wastrel invented by Peter Cook. As Cook's editor put it, Sir Arthur is blessed with the wealth to do what he wants, but not the sense to know that what he's doing is totally futile.

"I've learned from my mistakes," said Sir Arthur, who harboured a lifelong ambition to teach ravens to fly underwater, "and I'm sure I can repeat them."

In his blind conviction that what worked with England at the 2003 World Cup would work with a different team in a different country against different opponents two years later, Woodward reinforced the dictum that generals always fight the last war.

The comedic model who springs to mind is the deranged General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett in Blackadder. In one episode Melchett tells Blackadder that high command has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure victory in the field.

"Ah," says Blackadder. "Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy?"

Indeed it would, but Melchett is quite unperturbed when Blackadder points out that this plan has been tried 18 times before with the same outcome - everyone getting slaughtered in the first ten seconds. That's what makes it a brilliant plan, brays Melchett - "it's exactly the last thing they'd expect us to do."

And yet, and yet.

Although, as one English newspaper put it, Woodward departed these shores on a cloud of derision after his studied ungraciousness at the end-of-tour press conference, his sharpest barb contained more than a grain of truth.

It's difficult to understand why New Zealanders were so dismissive of his assertion that the World Cup, where reputations can be destroyed in a single game, is all that really counts. If he'd been asked for supporting evidence, Woodward could simply have pointed to the public reaction to the All Blacks' semi-final exits in 1999 and 2003.

For almost 70 years New Zealand rugby's Holy Grail was a series win in South Africa. In its bloody-minded pursuit of this dream, the rugby community was prepared to drive people away from the game in their thousands, divide the nation and tarnish New Zealand's standing in the world.

In 1996 the long quest ended; the great prize was finally secured.

But how quickly the warm glow faded. All we hear from anyone wanting to prick New Zealand rugby's balloon - and from the current All Black coaching panel - is that we haven't won the World Cup for 20 years.

John Hart, the triumphant coach in 1996, and John Mitchell are largely and sourly remembered for having failed to bring home the World Cup. All their successes and trophies won apparently count for naught.

Woodward got New Zealand rugby wrong on virtually every other count, but he was right about this: if the All Blacks stumble in France in 2007, the series win over the Lions will be consigned to the dustbin of history faster than Stuart Dickinson can recommend a yellow card.

So now all that remains is to wish Sir Clive well in his lonely trek in the footsteps of Peter Sellers, John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson and to give him our heartfelt thanks. In two short months he's succeeded in doing what various organisations have spent the best part of a decade trying and failing to do. He's made us look forward to the Tri-Nations.