91Èȱ¬

Cardiff Central railway station early on a Sunday morning in November, the only colour for miles around the cherry-red signs on the Brains brewery, is one of the less uplifting places to begin your day.

But while the majority of huddled travellers looked as happy as naturists at the North Pole, the small pockets of gold-shirted Australia fans were wearing smiles as bright as bikinis.

Even as the rain turned to sleet and the grey clouds descended even lower overhead, you could understand their optimism. After a tempestuous few weeks, their team is heading for sunnier times. If only the same could be said of all the northern hemisphere teams.

Thank heavens for the rays of sunshine coming from Ireland. Without the stirring deeds of Declan Kidney's men in Dublin, this autumn would have been a bleak one indeed for the Six Nations teams.

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At a boozy central London bash on Thursday afternoon, Duncan Hamilton's fine became the 21st winner of the .

Hamilton has form - his book on Brian Clough, Provided You Don't Kiss Me, won 'The Bookie' two years ago - but he was still shocked to become only the second two-time winner in the award's history.

"I said to my wife that I wasn't going to win," he told me afterwards. "I'm absolutely stunned. I thought the standard of the entries was too high, so I probably owe her an apology. Also, I worked on it every day of our honeymoon, including the wedding day itself..."

It's been a big year for sports books. Over 150 were entered for this year's award (a new record) which the judges - broadcasters Danny Kelly and , sportswriters Hugh McIlvanney and Alyson Rudd, and SportsPages bookshop founder John Gaustad - whittled down first to an official long-list of 13, and then a final shortlist of six.

Wise though these sporting sages undoubtedly are, it's clearly a game of opinions. Gaustad revealed that each of the judges had a different favourite from that shortlist, and that many hours of late-night argument were required for agreement to finally reached.

Which leads us to the public vote. What's been your favourite sports read of the year? We'll call it The Bloggie. If it lacks in history or prize money, it'll make up for it in audience interaction.

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This is the year everything changed for Jess Ennis: world champion and $60,000 (£36,000) richer, invited to Downing Street, the new golden girl of British athletics. Except there's a problem.

"I've still not had that prize money from Berlin," she says. "I actually forgot about it, to be honest - you have to fill out a form while you're out there, but I forgot. Yeah. I've got to chase that up..."

You can forgive the oversight. It's been a hectic few months for Ennis since her heptathlon gold on those sunny two days in last August. There's been the ("Surreal - I presented the award for best album to ") a trip to No.10 after the Cosmopolitan Awards ("So many celebrities and random people everywhere, like Dannii Minogue") and a few extra honours for herself too, including female athlete of the year at the s.

"It's nice to step out of my world into another one sometimes," she says, fresh from a three-hour training session, "although going up on stage in front of all those people at the Mobos was definitely scary. One of the boys from was saying - 'Oh, my mum was watching you, could you say hello to my mum for me?'"

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Lewis ' Mad Dog' Moody - scourge of nervous full-backs, fearless ruck rampager, king of the kamikaze charge-down - has an unexpected confession to make: he's scared of spiders.

"I honestly used to hate them," he says. "I'd dread seeing one. The lads used to love it - they'd find a spider in the changing-room and chase me round the room with it, put one in my boots. I had to go on an course, where they made me hold a tarantula. I had to sort something out or they'd have teased me forever."

It doesn't end there. While he's now OK with smaller spiders ("I can pick up the baby ones") there's also his terror of heights.

"Before the last World Cup we trained with the Marines down in Poole, and they did a high-wires course with us. Ooof! We had to climb up a telegraph pole and stand on this tiny piece of wood at the top. Four of you had to do it, all stand on this bit of wood, and I remember just clinging to Ben Kay. Clinging to him."

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England's purple new kit, we were told before the Argentina match, was the most advanced rugby kit ever - 27% lighter than the last one, specially designed to make them harder to tackle and fleeter of foot.

If that's really true, we can only be grateful they weren't wearing the old one. Saturday wasn't so much the start of a new purple patch for English rugby as a mauve mess. While other teams develop and improve, England appear to be a side marooned.

"A win's a win," goes the old sporting adage, but the 75,000 people at Twickenham who witnessed might feel like disagreeing. This was a performance so dispiriting that some England fans didn't know whether to boo or sob.

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On a cold November day 19 years ago, England took on Argentina at Twickenham and dished out a 51-0, seven-try spanking. History, you can confidently wager, is unlikely to repeat itself this Saturday.

In a country where soccer has always dominated, Argentine rugby football is in the ascendant. Two places higher than England in the , coming off two wins in their last three against the hosts and with their best players in demand at the game's richest clubs, this generation of Pumas will not roll over and have their bellies tickled.

That Argentina's rugby team could be more successful on the international stage than its football team represents one of the more remarkable stories in sport. And it is not something that has happened by accident.

"Rugby has been growing worldwide, but in Argentina it's probably grown more than anywhere else," says one of the key men in Argentina's wonderful run to third place in the last World Cup.

"We now have a club structure in place that is almost unbelievable. It's probably one of the strongest set-ups in the world."

Former England and Leicester scrum-half was assistant coach to Manuel Loffreda during the World Cup and is currently head of the country's new high-performance programme.

"The strength of the game here now is phenomenal," he says. "There are 60,000 people regularly playing the game, 400 Argentines involved in professional rugby at some level in Europe and over 80 thriving clubs in Buenos Aires alone. The club game is booming.

"It's the best amateur league in the world. The sacrifice and passion of the players, coaches and officials is unmatched."

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James Haskell has a rather surprising revelation to make: in the last few seconds before running out for big matches, he likes to listen to .

A cheesy Canadian crooner might not seem like the obvious choice for a granite-jawed international rugby player, but for Haskell that is exactly the point. "People have lots of preconceptions about me," he says, unblinkingly, "and they're all wrong."

For a man yet to nail down a regular place in the England side, Haskell has attracted a considerable amount of attention. Not all of it has been entirely favourable.

"My biggest issue is that lots of things are spoken about me before people have actually met me," he says, squashed into an antique chair at England's training headquarters at Pennyhill Park.

"People throw words around like 'Brand Haskell', because of something they've read on a website, but none of that exists. I work as hard as anyone, perhaps harder, to be good at my game. For me it's only about wanting to perform well for my country."

Ah yes. Brand Haskell. It's not the 24-year-old's rugby that generally causes him problems. Most England fans would agree that he fully deserves his recall for this Saturday's battle against Argentina. What some people seem to struggle with - among them a fair few regular 606 and 91Èȱ¬ blog users - is the perception that Haskell is more interested in raising his profile than rucking, more focused on Tweets than tackles.

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As the two team coaches drove off slowly into the dark Twickenham streets on Saturday night, a lacklustre firework display briefly erupted in the skies above them - a few bright rockets, the odd whizzer, and then nothing much to follow it all up.

It must have felt depressingly familiar to the England supporters staggering off in search of a final pint or two.  

While their gold-shirted counterparts were gathered in groups around the spanking new stands, hoisting cans aloft and singing a song or two in support of Wales 130 miles to the west, those in white and red were left bemoaning another performance that promised much but delivered too little.

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When the England team to face Australia arrives back at their in the leafy, golden Surrey countryside after training, one man is noticeably later than all the rest.

There will be no harsh words from manager Martin Johnson, however, and no disciplinary action, for that man is Jonny Wilkinson, and he is late only because he has stayed behind at training for extra kicking practice.

A lot of talk around the team this week has been about . But in some ways, he is exactly as he has always been.

, the second of the World Cup 2003 comeback kids in Johnson's XV (Lewis Moody being the third), summed it up nicely.

"Me and Jonny sat down in a pub last week and had a quick beer after training," he said on Wednesday. "You can just tell from the way he is that he's so much more relaxed and happy-go-lucky. Obviously he's still got that focus, but he looks like he's got more of a balance."

There is an intake of breath from all within ear-shot. Jonny had a beer? "Well, I had a beer, he had a Coke," admits Thompson, laughing.

He is then asked which of them, four months into their revitalised continental careers, speaks the better French. "Jonny," he says resignedly. "Of course he does. You know what he's like - everything has to be perfect."

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Such is the injury crisis that has engulfed the England rugby union team this autumn that, when Martin Johnson enters the room, you half expect him to stagger about like a 19th century naval surgeon, his white tunic splashed with blood, a bottle of ether under one arm and a severed limb under the other.

Johnson has seen his best-laid plans and best-known team holed below the water line ahead of this Saturday's battle against Australia. At the last count, 27 men from his elite and Saxon crews were laid up in the infirmary, the hamstrung Mike Tindall the latest to limp out.

You could forgive him for cursing like an old sea-dog. In private, maybe he has. But in public at least, this battle-hardened old admiral is turning a blind eye to the danger signals.

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