A lot of people in New Zealand, All Black greats like Murray Mexted, think he’s the cat’s whiskers, so he must have something going for him.”. Binjamin Wilkomirski’s book of childhood memories, Fragments, makes harrowing reading. It details how during his boyhood his “playgrounds” were the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz, where he saw his friends being killed by sadistic guards. I didn’t really know him from Adam, to be frank with you, but by the time we’d had a couple of team meetings, I knew he was a natural leader He just demands respect. “He’s in on merit, pure and simple; I watched him play against Newcastle on the opening day of the season and thought he went bloody well That’s the criteria.

Last summer is last summer; a candidate for this England side has to be doing the business now.”Having said that, his contribution as a tourist was phenomenal. But there’s a hell of a lot of rugby to be played before the World Cup next year, which is the real target for all of us.”Woodward is blessed with a number of multi-purpose back rowers – Dallaglio can play either six or eight, as can Clarke, while Hill leads a more unusual double life as a seven or eight – and he sees no earthly reason why he should be drawn on the precise balance of his ideal unit. Last season, he switched from a classical Dallaglio-Hill-Diprose triumvirate to a more radical Dallaglio-Back-Hill arrangement and, if he feels further World Cup experimentation is necessary, now is the time to reach for the test tubes.But no one relishes the hard yards more than Clarke and it is perfectly feasible that when push comes to mighty shove against the Wallabies and Springboks later this winter, Woodward will play him at blind-side alongside Dallaglio and Hill in the most physically capable loose trio at his disposal. Suddenly, the threat of Gary Teichmann and Andre Venter seems a little less alarming.”We all saw what Ben achieved in the summer in pretty dire circumstances, but there is no sentiment about his selection in this squad,” said Woodward yesterday. “The back row is a real English strength at the moment and immensely competitive, probably more so than any other area of the side apart from scrum-half.

It is always important to force your way into the first squad of an international season because, if you don’t, you can only sit back and watch others perform. Much to the puzzlement of those southern hemisphere sophisticates who know a loose forward from a loser, the great Lion of ‘93 was handed the sop of captaining the midweek “stiffs” against New Zealand’s second-string.Clarke’s display in the mud and slime of Hamilton’s Rugby Park may well turn out to have been a career-saver. Eighty self-sacrificial and hugely influential minutes at the coalface made him a stone cold certainty for the three remaining Tests and had Woodward singing his praises all the way from Carisbrook to Cape Town. “The guy is an absolute diamond,” beamed Woodward after the compelling tussle with the All Blacks in Auckland.True to his word, Woodward has restored his gem to the shop window for the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers with Italy and the Netherlands.