On the big day, the whole squad was together as one – there was an amazing ‘let’s do it’ spirit amongst us But not being involved left a big hole in me, even so. I would have given anything to have been out there on the pitch.”Thankfully, there’s another World Cup left in me I want to be part of a winning Lions team next summer, too. This is an exciting time to be involved at international level. Everything is there in front of me; it’s up to me to make it mine.”. And on top of that, I was out of the 22 for the business end of the tournament and knew I wasn’t going to feature in the final. The week after that World Cup match with Uruguay was the worst I can remember.

I felt really dumb about the incident when I was heading for the sin-bin; it was a completely innocent thing between the supporters and myself and had nothing to do with arrogance, but it looked bloody awful. “I’m more relaxed about my rugby now, more calm in my own mind. I used to be terribly nervous before big matches, to the point of physical sickness. It reached the point where I loathed the build-up, from the night-before stuff right through the morning of the game. Half of it was the prospect of putting your body through such extreme demands, half of it was the fear of having a complete bummer and letting people down I would get myself in a shocking state. Thank God I handle it better now.”There again, I can still get down about things.

Even though we lost – and believe me, I hate defeat more than anything – I enjoyed the matches, especially when Simon Shaw was sent off in Auckland and we were down to 14 blokes.”It was frustrating, that match, because I felt we had the winning of it when we were up to strength. In my view, it is in games like the Eden Park Test that a player is judged.”Worsley was judged that day, and emerged with reputation enhanced “I certainly came back full of confidence,” he agreed. But there was also a freedom about it, playing in the face of such adversity and seeing people react fantastically under duress. Somehow, he then summoned again the furies for the Tests against New Zealand and Australia.”I was so battle-hardened – and probably battle-weary, as well – that the England coaches could have asked me to do anything and I wouldn’t have thought twice,” he said.”It had been a massive season, what with the World Cup and the Six Nations and the club competitions, and I felt pretty light-headed by the end of it. But in truth, Worsley has considered himself a wholly mature and independent player for several seasons.”Once I broke into the England set-up, I don’t think I ever felt I was in Lawrence’s shadow, and there has never been any suggestion of it in our dealings with each other,” he said. “But equally, I always understood that the perception was out there. There was an obvious teacher-pupil element to the relationship in the early days, but by the time Worsley established himself as a going concern on the England front, he wanted to be seen in his own light, as what Neville Cardus memorably described as “the full man himself”.The popular assumption is that Dallaglio’s retirement from international rugby leaves the way clear for Worsley to assert himself in his captain’s stead.