KEY POINTS:
Everything about Martin Johnson signals authority.
However, the unanswered question for England rugby and its supporters is whether Johnson the player, former captain and World Cup-winning leader can transfer those leadership talents to the demands of coaching the side.
His job description is officially "manager" but Johnson is
the bloke with ultimate responsibility for directing the staff, setting up the structures and gameplans and implementing them.
He wears a tracksuit to training, gets his hands dirty, issues the instructions - in New Zealand lingo he is the coach.
It has been a rocky start for Johnson with two defeats in his first three tests in charge.
The rebuilding could take some time and were there room on his forehead for more worry lines he would surely add some more before his time in this job is done.
When Johnson gets into his chit-chat, you feel he could conceal small creatures in those lines. They turn into furrows as he gets into his explanatory work.
There will be nowhere to hide for any England player though who does not come up to the standards Johnson set for himself and his team before they secured the 2003 World Cup.
This bloke is one tough hombre whose thousand-yard stare can be searing when he drops it on you from a great height and close range.
This is no-nonsense-Johnson, the man charged with fixing the good ship England which has hit too many rugby reefs since the triumph in Sydney five years ago.
There have been some good times and many gutsy moments, such as reaching last year's Rugby World Cup final in Paris. But there have also been too many lulls for those in charge of the English game.
Player development has receded, the RFU and clubs have been scrapping, Sir Clive Woodward, Andy Robinson and Brian Ashton have been tried as coaches since 2003 and discarded, more and more foreign players are inhabiting the premiership.
And of late, Woodward has been chipping away with his criticisms even though he was given some extraordinary leeway before his side claimed the Webb Ellis Trophy.
The 2003 boss fears that Johnson's inexperience at the senior coaching level would be exposed by others such as All Black supremo Graham Henry.
Naturally, the RFU have rallied around their man. They point out that Johnson is a long-term appointment and they do not expect magical results from the start of his reign.
At the All Blacks base, across the other side of London, there is significant support and encouragement for Johnson. It would have been surprising were it any other way.
Henry had Johnson as his Lions captain when they toured Australia in 2001, while Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith have worked and smelt the issues for some time in the Northern Hemisphere.
The empathy is spontaneous and a change from the feelings the All Black panel had for ex-England and Lions coach Woodward.
It has nothing to do with Johnson's spell in New Zealand when he played as a youth for King Country and everything to do with his playing record, his mana, knowledge of the game, honesty, work ethic and aura.
Henry started the cross-city coaching admiration club chat.
"My immediate thoughts were that he would be very good at the job. It will take some time. I think he will be very good because he has got very high standards, he expects high standards from others and they respect him," he said.
It would take time for Johnson to get his head around the challenges that go with heading the England squad. There were contractual issues, player depth hurdles, changes in the game to deal with, administrative and organisational difficulties.
But in his wry tone Henry pointed out there were a million players in England and only 140,000 in New Zealand. The implication is that with those numbers a decent coach ought to be able to put together a good squad.
The key difficulty for the England coach, as Henry sees it, is local players getting enough opportunities because of the influx of imported help in the domestic game.
"When you continue to bring all these New Zealanders over here and fill up the Premiership with them and the English guys don't get a chance the national side is going to suffer, isn't it? So perhaps the best way to do it is to stop all those Kiwis coming over and you will be right," Henry added.
Johnson would be feeling the heat, it was not a pleasant part of the job and was always there when you coached international sport. He understood those pressures, he had felt them during his long playing career, he knew what he was getting into.
There was some additional coaching sympatico from Hansen.
"I have been there, I lost 11 in a row with Wales and of course you are under pressure." The key for Johnson and England, says Hansen, is to have a plan. "And he has clearly got a plan, because you can see they are trying to do something different.
"The media and all those people who think they know everything about rugby and don't have to front up and do anything in the arena, they have to be patient and give them the opportunity to see their plan through. I agree with Graham, I think [Johnson] will end up as a very good coach because of the character of the person and he will demand people around him come with him," Hansen said.
