David Leggat: Best hold all bets on who will coach England

Who'd be in Andy Robinson's shoes right now?

The England rugby coach not only has big concerns after a dreadful Six Nations Championship. He's got Sir C peering over his shoulder.

What on Earth would possess Sir Clive Woodward to want to return to English rugby?

Remember, whatever your thoughts on his performance in charge of the Lions last year - and there are plenty in this mind, none of them particularly flattering - he's the guy who steered England to the World Cup triumph in Australia three years ago.

He should have quit then and there, but hung on for one more, ill-starred season. Even so, he walked away at the top. There was no other mountain to climb with England.

But the drums are beating that Woodward wants back, maybe not as coach but in a wide-ranging organisational role. A seat on the Rugby Football Union board appeals. Then again, so would an all-powerful supremo role.

After Sir Matt Busby resigned as Manchester United manager in 1968, having led the club to become the first English winners of the European Cup, successive managers talked of the Busby hand hovering over them like a dark shadow.

He was given some nebulous title - in charge of the United wives bridge club morning teas or some such - but the bottom line was every morning the new manager had to walk past a big door with the name of the club's single greatest figure inscribed on it. And for three years it did their heads in.

Robinson did his time as Woodward's understudy. This should have been his chance to step out of the shadows.

Whether he's good enough is in danger of becoming almost a side issue.

And Woodward has agents working on his behalf, whether by accident or design.

Veteran centre Will Greenwood, in a column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, claimed that Sir C had been "in talks" with English rugby bosses for months. Woodward and the RFU men moved swiftly to distance themselves.

Read what you will into that. Rest assured Robinson will have.

Woodward had a hankering to move into soccer, which he often claimed was his first true winter sporting love.

He got it at Southampton, where he had an uneasy relationship with the manager at the time, Harry Redknapp. A Cockney wide boy type not averse to the odd bit of ducking and diving, Redknapp was probably hearing whispers in the corridors and doubtless wondering what Woodward and his mate, the club chairman Rupert Lowe, were cooking up.

But the point is, in rugby there's only one way Woodward can go if he does step back through Twickenham's gates. He has scaled the heights.

So what possesses people to return to scenes of glory? In athletic terms, think of Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.

Jordan won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls then retired with a hankering to play pro baseball. A year in the lower leagues put him right on that, so he returned and bagged another three championships.

Ali won the world heavyweight crown three times, and in his later years simply refused - or was unable - to acknowledge when enough was enough. We all know the result.

There's countless others who have been unable to cope once the spotlight has been switched off.

But with coaches and managers it's different. Theirs aren't the names chanted from the terraces; theirs aren't the autographs sought out by young hands.

Perhaps it is the lure of the challenge, undoubtedly fuelled by a vast self-belief in their own abilities.

Woodward, a successful businessman and with ambitious sporting mind, wants back in. He can mount a decent case on his behalf. He has that self-belief in spades.

England's defence of the World Cup is 18 months away.

Who will be coaching them then? Best hold all bets.