The madness of King Jonny the First began and ended in 2003. It was a brief bout of mental turbulence that came and went during the World Cup of that year, merciful for its brevity and delicious in that it was a rare manifestation in public of a sporting genius suffering a breakdown.

I don’t suppose Clive Woodward feels he has to take much advice from anyone at the moment. From outside his closeknit managing-coaching-playing family, that is. Life must be pretty rosy.

They say that no person is bigger than the game, but Vernon Pugh, who died last Thursday, came pretty close to bucking the cliché. For the best part of a decade, he truly was lord and master of rugby union.