91Èȱ¬

As a sports journalist, things don't always go to plan. You turn up to watch train and have a chat with , only to discover the session has been cancelled. The club's press guy says you can speak to Billy on the phone, before telling you you'll have to make do with Storm's young Yorkshireman instead. Sorry, Gareth, but you're just not the man the Australian press like to call "the greatest footballer in any code".

But when I hear the following line, I realise I might have the right bloke after all: "If I'd stayed in England, I probably still would have been playing rugby union for ." Revealing, wistful and more than a little bit profound.

The 20-year-old Widdop is in England with the Storm for Sunday's . From Halifax scholarship player to understudy to Kangaroo full-back Slater in the space of four whirlwind years. "It's a bit surreal, really," says Widdop ahead of the game at Elland Road.

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While many a tabloid journalist, apparently shocked that a fabulously wealthy sports star had cheated on his wife, flapped and squawked in the wake of like one of , I suspect most of the British public were rather more sanguine.

Indeed, and unlikely as it might have seemed, there were those who thought it could have been the making of him, the moment Woods turned from Golfbot to flesh and blood human being: "It's alive! It's alive!"

But watching him perform in the snug Sunset Room at , reading his pre-programmed statement to a hand-picked coterie of "friends, colleagues and close associates", it soon became clear he's quite happy being perceived as a Golfbot: "Someone remember to switch me off when I'm done."

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Is there any situation Steve Borthwick wouldn't take from? Getting mugged? Having his car keyed? Losing his house in a game of cards? I can picture him now, beaming across at his opponent and announcing: "I never liked that bathroom suite anyway".

Judging from some of the texts that poured in after , there are plenty of you with a similar mindset to the England captain: "Stop bashing our brave boys", "a win is a win", that sort of stuff. I found these texts more depressing than the game itself.

But they open up an interesting philosophical, not to mention cultural, debate: does the England rugby team so often struggle to fulfil its potential, as measured by player numbers and financial clout, because of a deep-seated acceptance of mediocrity? I don't have a definitive answer, but I doubt many members of the New Zealand or South African public would be so sanguine after such a disjointed display by their team.

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91Èȱ¬ Sport in Bagshot

At times, Martin Johnson resembled a man who'd been sprung preparing some unpronounceable French dish in his kitchen while wearing a pinny. "Adventurous? Moi? Please, it's nothing really..."

The team-sheet suggested - only suggested, mind - that he was bang to rights, with the names of and presented as the killer evidence. But still the England manager, as stubborn as ever, was having none of it.

"It'll probably be reported I've picked the most attacking team possible," he said, "but we'll have to defend as well. Matt Tait can do that, and so can Danny Care." Before Johnson added: "The weather reports are cold and wet for Saturday..."

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There are two fundamental problems with films based on real sporting events. First, you know what's going to happen. Second, the story is never going to be as dramatic in the retelling as it was first time round.

Which explains how managed to make the most charismatic sportsman who ever lived seem a little bit dull, and why , the largely fictional account of a rugby league player in the 1960s, remains the best film ever made about rugby (sorry, union fans...).

, Clint Eastwood's film about , is what you might call prosaic. No-frills, pretty realistic, for the most part truthful. And therein lies the problem.

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