England following the fern

This week England will announce a radical shake-up of their coaching structure and effectively confirm they are unashamedly trying to beat New Zealand by thinking like New Zealand.

And the English aren't alone. The French and Wallabies are going down that road, too. Even the Celts have adopted much of the All Blacks' new philosophy.

This represents a dramatic shift from where we were in the wake of England's World Cup win in 2003. Back then, there were Anglophiles in every corner.

If you couldn't beat them - and no one could - then it made good sense to try and join them.

Doing things the way England's coach, Sir Clive Woodward, did was so fashionable. Woodward spent large. He had specialists for every skill - a backs coach, forwards coach, kicking coach, defence coach, lineout coach, scrum coach, catching coach and even a peripheral vision coach.

Woodward himself was rarely sighted in a tracksuit. He was a big picture kind of guy, focusing on motivation and strategy. And he was able to do all this because he had persuaded his board that sport was all about attention to detail.

From 1999 to 2003 he played his strongest team in every game. He picked rugged, battle-hardened forwards whose main expertise was in the set piece. There was nothing terribly ambitious about the game plan. The ball occasionally got out to Johnny Wilkinson at first five-eighths and he booted the skin off it.

Every now and again, with barely a defender left standing, Wilkinson would put it through the hands. It was simple but brutally effective and when Woodward returned from Australia clutching the World Cup, he had definitive proof that he was indeed the rugby genius he claimed he was.

England had made rugby a confrontation once again and in 2004, every other nation went hunting for their own Martin Johnson.

It became a boom period for specialists, too. The Scots hired the works, the Welsh beefed up their team under new supremo Mike Ruddock, the Boks went back to set-piece basics with Jake White and even the French brought in a defensive coach.

But they were backing the wrong horse. While the rest of the world prepared themselves for trench warfare, New Zealand saw things differently.

They put in place a very different coaching structure. In came Graham Henry as head coach, supported by two assistants, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen, who had plenty of experience as head coaches themselves.

They decided to create a team that was underpinned by an efficient set piece but that could also play innovative, expansive football.

They also moved away from Woodward's blueprint and took the view that rather than play their best team each test, they needed a squad of 30 international standard players.

The game was too physical, the athletes so explosive that there was no way they could front up every week the way England's old war horses had.

To help build a wider talent base, they needed a more streamlined and effective pool of specialists.

Skills coach Mick Byrne and scrum coach Mike Cron were attached to the All Blacks and also available to get round the Super 14 franchises.

The new set-up has yielded both quality performances and results. And now, the rugby world no longer wants to emulate England. It is the All Blacks who are setting the trends.

Proof of that will come this week when, according to reports from the UK, England will announce that Andy Robinson has been retained as head coach but that his back-room staff are goners.

In will come Brian Ashton, the former coach of Ireland, to take charge of the backs while John Wells, former Leicester head coach, will take over the forwards. For Robinson read Henry, for Ashton read Smith and for Wells read Hansen.

Ashton shares many similarities with Smith. He's an innovative thinker who has been pilloried for employing strategies that have been ahead of their time.

His appointment is seen as a tacit acknowledgement that England need some sort of cutting edge if they are to live with the All Blacks. Wells, like Hansen, is salt-of-the-earth.

There will also be changes to the Academy system to ensure there is greater centralisation of coaching resources so, just as in New Zealand, there is a uniformity of skill sets from Colts through to the national team.

England's move comes after French coach Bernard Laporte said he wants to emulate the All Blacks by emulating their strength in depth.

The Wallabies, too, have not hidden their admiration for the All Black set-up. When new coach John Connolly was appointed he got it out there pretty quickly that he would be putting in place something similar - which he has done.

England are world champions but no one is chasing the red rose anymore. The silver fern is now the emblem of excellence.