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 the 16-9 squeak past a spirited Argentine side might feel like disagreeing. This was a performance so dispiriting that some England fans didn't know whether to boo or sob.

First, the positives. Lewis Moody had his second stormer in eight days. James Haskell and Mark Cueto justified their places. England scored a try, and just about hung on for a desperately-needed victory. Beyond that? There is no beyond that.

Error followed error. Aimless kick followed aimless kick. At half-time the scoreboard said 9-9, but you could have been forgiven for thinking it read 999 instead.

So fed up were the home supporters that many decided to make their own entertainment by firing paper darts at the pitch. The biggest cheer during the first 50 minutes came when one sailed all the way into the Argentine 22, in the process going several metres further than any England attack had.

Martin Johnson can barely bring himself to watch at Twickenham

That England came away with the victory does no more than paper over the gaping cracks. If there's a vision behind this team it's a blurred one. If there's a masterplan it's brilliantly disguised.

Some of the problems are selectorial. Ugo Monye is not an international full-back, and his calamitous catalogue of knock-ons and shaky spills of high balls should have seen Argentina ahead at the break.

Others are tactical. Possession was kicked away, generally straight down the throats of the eager Argentine backs. The three-quarters went sideways, running without angle or guile, and there was an almost complete absence of imagination or off-the-cuff creativity.

"We analysed how England were going to play," said Argentina's impressive skipper Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe afterwards, "and they didn't surprise us."

Jonny Wilkinson, his side's best player against Australia last week, was uncharacteristically off-key. More worryingly, his nascent partnership with Shane Geraghty showed no sign of bearing the fruits their combined talents suggest.

All around, there were basic mistakes. Monye dropped three punts in a row, Wilkinson put a drop-out straight into touch and then failed to find the line with a penalty from hand. When England found space and an overlap out on the right, Dan Hipkiss's pass flew into thin air with Monye dawdling 10 metres off the pace. Cueto even dropped a water-bottle lobbed to him by Jon Callard.

Excuses? Conditions weren't great, but neither were they disastrous. The rain held off for the full 80 minutes; the wind that battered the outside of the stadium generally failed to penetrate the enclosed bowl within.

Martin Johnson is not a man to take a pummelling without throwing a few swingers back himself. Normally in his post-match press conferences he's combative and unyielding, but on Saturday evening even this old fighter had the look of a man on the ropes.

"It was pretty difficult to watch at times," he admitted. "Ultimately, it's about winning the game, which we did, but it wasn't great. I can't come off after a performance like that and pretend it was good, because it wasn't."

At half-time a fair proportion of the Twickenham crowd booed their team off the pitch. For a man who as a player led his country to Grand Slam and World Cup triumphs, it must have been a wretched sound to hear.

"We probably deserved it," he said glumly. "They had every right not to be happy."

When asked where England had gone wrong, Johnson shrugged with resignation and ran through a list that threatened to be as endless as that awful first half.

"There were times when we could have kept the ball in play and we didn't." "We had virtually no territory." "When we kicked the chase wasn't good enough - that put the pressure right back on us, and we didn't handle that very well. "

There was more. "They squeezed us at the scrummage at times - if they'd been kicking on target it could have been very different." "At times we kicked it too long." "I think the team got a bit nervous. As the match goes on and on and it's level on the scoreboard it gets more and more tense, and frustration can really kill you if you let it."

And so it went on. You couldn't disagree with any of it. "We got done on the blind-side too many times in the first half." "Errors really, really hurt us. You saw what happened. They happen in games, but we made far too many." "We didn't help ourselves by being turned over so often."

This, let's remember, was against an Argentina side that hasn't played together for five months, a side featuring four amateur players and a three-quarter line stripped of its brightest and most experienced talents.

Of course England have had injury problems too, but they also have financial and playing resources that the Argentines can only dream of. It's no coincidence that England did what little damage they did after an hour's rugby had been played, when their superior fitness and depth of their bench began to tell.

England, less we forget, have been in camp for three weeks. They were playing at home. Argentina have been together for less than a week. For almost a third of their side, this was their first taste of Test rugby, let alone playing in front of 75,000 people at one of the game's most famous grounds.

Lobbe refused to make any of the obvious excuses afterwards. "I cannot say what would happen if we had a game before or three weeks together," he said smiling, "because I am not a wizard."

At the same time, the fact that he was so disappointed not to walk away with a draw or win spoke volumes for how the rest of the rugby world now views England.

"We could have won at Twickenham," he said flatly. "We're frustrated that by making one mistake we lost this game. We said in the dressing-room afterwards - this is our level now."

Even after Matt Banahan's try looked to have made the game safe, there was still time for England to almost throw it away. With Argentina out on their feet England returned to the purposeless kicking game of the first half and invited their plucky opponents to attack them one final time.

For three minutes the Pumas were camped five metres from the try-line, one bludgeoning drive or slipped tackle away from a try and possible parity. Had they broken through, those purple shirts would have been underneath some very red faces.

"In the end we were fighting for about three inches of Twickenham," said Johnson, gloomily. "We could have lost the match."

Those inches might have been held, but England have barely advanced more than a couple of yards under Johnson's command. They remain stranded in no-man's land, open to attack from the big guns, as far from the big breakthrough as they were 12 months ago.

Meanwhile, the All Blacks are racing into view. It is not a good place to be.

In a country where soccer has always dominated, Argentine rugby football is in the ascendant. Two places higher than England in the world rankings, 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 Felipe Contepomi, 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 Les Cusworth 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."

"The country is obsessed with football, big-time, but rugby is second in popularity, and a lot of people are very passionate about it," current Pumas skipper Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe told me on Thursday, standing outside Twickenham surrounded by happy Argentine fans after a photoshoot for adidas.

"These days rugby is a very open sport. It's all different social classes too - higher classes, lower classes. It's seen as a very valuable sport, with good values, and a help to society, and that's helped its spread. It's seen as a way of life, not just a sport."

Once encouraged into the game, the most promising 100 young players aged 17 and under are fast-tracked through a scheme looked after by the great Agustin Pichot, scrum-half and skipper to the national side for most of the past decade until his retirement last year.

"It helps them train, they help them get food, they help them get rest - they help with everything," says Lobbe.

"That means all the young players are now really well prepared. They're part of the system and they know everything, so that makes the senior team much better.

"Now you will always find new players coming through. The new system allows young players to be as good as they can be - they can now really achieve their potential."

Whereas in the past Argentina could only produce the occasional world-class player - take an extended bow, Hugo Porta - they now have a strength in depth that is the envy of many better-financed rugby nations. Their second-string, the Jaguars, won the first Americas Rugby Championship last month, and while the elite squad will certainly miss the injured Contepomi, Juan Martin Hernandez, Lucas Amorosino and Gonzalo Camacho on Saturday, it has not been fatally weakened.

Number eight Lobbe, front-row stalwarts like Rodrigo Roncero, Martin Scelzo and Mario Ledesma, lock Patricio Albacete and Harlequins centre Gonzalo Tiesi are all at least the equal, if not superior, to their opposite numbers in white.

"You watch these guys train," says Jonny Wilkinson of his Toulon team-mates Lobbe and Contepomi, "and you think, 'Thank God they are on my side'."

Of the 29 players in the Pumas squad for this tour, 21 ply their club trade overseas. For Contepomi, this has been a key factor in his country's dramatic improvement.

"It's huge," he says. "If you look at who our best international victories have been against, most of them have been over European countries. That comes because you play against those players week in, week out. If you can beat them at club level, you ask yourself, why can't we beat them at international level.

Argentina's win over England at Twickenham in 2006 was the springboard for success at the 2007 World Cup

"The players are now preparing better individually. The team as a whole can then play better.

"It's about being confident that you can play against the best and give them a good run. Sometimes you'll win, sometimes you'll lose, but no longer will you be going just to play a game - you'll know you could actually win a competition.

"All that unconscious fear of playing super-power players goes because you're competing against them all the time. To compare, we haven't played anyone in the Tri-Nations for the last two years, so every time we then play them we think we're playing against supermen."

Success has bred success. That landmark 25-18 win at Twickenham three years ago and the wins over Ireland and hosts France - twice - at the World Cup has fostered both an outstanding team spirit ("They have something very special - it is a pity you can't bottle it and sell it, because you'd make a fortune," says Cusworth) and fuelled the boom back home.

"It (the World Cup) was massive," says Lobbe. "There was a lot of happiness in Argentina, and it was very positive for the team, because it showed that when you work hard and stick with the right path you can achieve results. It was quite amazing."

All this hard work could yet go to waste, however. Argentina still only play friendlies against the top Test teams between World Cups. While they have a provisional invitation from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to join the Tri-Nations from 2012, there are still some major financial and television issues to be resolved.

"We need to play in an annual international competition," says Contepomi. "It's absolutely vital that we join the Tri-Nations in 2012. At the moment we're far behind those other nations, but I think if you keep competing against them every year we'll become better.

"At home, we need to make further improvements. We have to be realistic - rugby is a professional game worldwide, and if we want to keep up we have to be professional too. We must keep the old values, but that's the way it's going.

"Then I would like to see one or two Argentina-based franchises getting involved in the Super 14. There will be the first few years of a learning-curve, but then we will be much better for it."

Before all that, of course, comes the chance to inflict a second successive defeat on Martin Johnson's team. Even with their injury-hit team, the current generation can sense another famous win.

"It's going to be tough but we believe everything is possible," says Lobbe.

"For us Twickenham is the cathedral of rugby," smiles Contepomi. "It's an honour to play there, but there's no fear."

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 BBC blog users - is the perception that Haskell is more interested in raising his profile than rucking, more focused on Tweets than tackles.

Much of the criticism is unfair. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a personal website - lots of people, sports stars or otherwise, do - and the calendar was a charity one that also featured Simon Shaw, Tom Palmer and Olly Barkley. The switch to Stade Francais has worked well for his game, and as for Twitter - well, if we're going to hang people for their throwaway 140-character updates, all of us are in trouble.

All the same, it has clearly taken its toll.

"Anyone who has the time to fill in comments online, you know - obviously people can have an opinion, but I don't care what people say," Haskell tells me, blood congealing slowly around a dark red cut across the bridge of his nose.

"I don't ever look at anything online, especially people's comments, because they bear no resemblance to me. All I need to worry about is what's happening next to me and how hard I work, and what the people in power and importance, like the coaches, think.

"With Twitter it's quite nice to just have a little avenue to express your feelings. And the fact that people are able to give their opinions back - it's quite enjoyable. It can also be a little bit addictive, that constant updating, but from my perspective all I want to be known for is being a rugby player. The best way to answer these people who have an opinion is to let my rugby do the talking."

Haskell speaks with the weariness of a man who has had his fingers burned too many times.

"Out in France I don't do any media, I don't talk to any PRs or anything - my focus is just on the rugby. I just really wanted to concentrate on my rugby.

"The relief of not having any - the French media are very different to over here, and I can just get on with playing. I'm like an academy player over in France . I live with my friends, we live in a nice house, we just turn up for training, we go out and enjoy Paris - the sights, the restaurants. And that's it. It's simplified and it's perfect. It's all I want to do."

So all the attention, the off-the-field activities, became impossible to deal with?

"I think the period I was in, and the sort of rugby I was playing, and some of the things that happened in my private life, and that kind of stuff just meant that it all became too much. So having the new simplicity is really nice."

Haskell's selection - allied to the promotions for his fellow replacements against Australia, Paul Hodgson and Dylan Hartley (Duncan Bell's selection owing to David Wilson's injury) - reflects Martin Johnson's pressing need to inject pace and dynamism into a side that looked as stodgy as cold porridge for large parts of the defeat to Australia.

Johnson is well aware that defeat to Argentina, even though they are two places higher than England in the current IRB world rankings, would be considered unpalatable by large sections of the Twickenham crowd. While a loss is unlikely to have the same terminal impact on his role as the Pumas' 25-18 win in 2006 had on Andy Robinson's - seven defeats in 12 games might be a depressing record, but it's no seven reverses in a row - it would add further weight to the criticism that Johnson has failed to noticeably improve England's fortunes in his year in charge.

That Haskell is one of the men charged with lifting the side might strike some as a little ironic, considering he was left out of Johnson's elite squad in July and warned publicly by the manager that his move to France could put any future England place in jeopardy.

Haskell, however, says he never felt that he had been left out in the cold.

"People wanted to make a big deal about me not being in the squad, but I spoke to Martin and he told me that if I performed and performed well, I'd be back in it. I never missed any games for England or any training, so the relevance of being included in that squad was by-the-by."

His switch from Wasps to Stade drew criticism from other learned quarters (his old mentor Lawrence Dallaglio was particularly disappointed to lose his talents) but Haskell seems a revitalised and more focused player for the move.

At times last season his progression seemed to have stalled, the rampant enthusiasm that saw him dubbed 'Keeno' by Dallaglio and Joe Worsley as a young Wasp diluted by the demands of the English game.

Haskell shows the sort of dynamism in training that England will be looking for on Saturday

"Sometimes in the past I think I got caught up in trying to be a master of everything" he admits. "You're just not going to be able to do that as a rugby player - even the best players in the world have got areas they need to work on.

"You have to play to your strengths, and that's what I've done. I've fitted in with a very good back row in France, which has meant that I've been able to cultivate what I'm good at, which is ball-carrying, tackling and competing for the ball. That's exactly what I want to bring to this squad."

Haskell has talked in the past about wanting to make the number six jersey his own. All 13 of his previous starts for the national side have come at blind-side, and if he hasn't always remained there ("My first game in 2007I started at six, but I only lasted 19 seconds because Joe Worsley got knocked out,") his selection at eight might raise eyebrows with Wasps fans who saw him struggle there at times over the last few seasons.

Haskell nods. "Yeah. For a long time Lawrence just kept playing, and the strengths I had in areas of the game were at six and seven at that period of time. I've played most of the time at six or seven for Stade and I think those are my key positions, but the opportunity to play at eight is something I can handle.

"I have the experience to do that, I think I can offer something there and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not going to make any assertions about me wanting to stay there or not stay there - I've got an opportunity to play, and that's all that matters. To fit into the England squad you would play anywhere."

And so, just before kick-off at Twickenham on Saturday, Michael Bublé will get the nod once again.

The tune of choice? 'Haven't Met You Yet'. As far as Haskell is concerned, it could hardly be more appropriate.

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.

Jonny Wilkinson finished on the losing side despite a superb comeback to Test rugby

"We used a bit of nous out there," Wallabies coach Robbie Deans remarked afterwards, and that summed it up succinctly. Australia weren't spectacular, but they didn't need to be.

Despite shipping eight penalties in the first 40 minutes and kicking away plenty of possession, they held England at bay with growing comfort and then made increasing inroads with every attack they had.

Johnson's men had started as brightly as the autumn sunshine that filled the south-west London air. As Jonny Wilkinson's sweetly-struck drop-goal split the Twickenham posts after just two and a half minutes, there was a roar from the grandstands that was part welcome back and part excited expectation.

When a Wilkinson penalty sailed over soon after to make it 6-0, lips were smacked with anticipation, hip-flasks clinked together.

The old-stagers - Wilkinson, Steve Thompson, a marauding Lewis Moody - were enjoying their time in the spotlight, the Wallabies looking rattled.

Adam Ashley-Cooper punted poorly twice in quick succession, Will Genia decided to run alone at a wall of white and was snagged and pinged in a trice.

But, as the afternoon light faded, so did England's fire. First Genia dummied and darted to get his side on the board, then his forwards began to behave at the breakdown and invited England to run into them instead.

If Australia had come back into the match before the break, they dominated it utterly afterwards. While England failed to score a point for the final 55 minutes and almost never threatened the try-line, the visitors pinched one try from nowhere and tossed away two more from so close to somewhere that they must still be rubbing their eyes with disbelief.

That the star performers were the two young blades who had started so uncertainly will give Deans great heart for the future.

Genia was named man-of-the-match after a mature performance full of class

Genia was quick with his pass and silky-smooth with his running, looking a ready-made successor to George Gregan and Nick Farr-Jones and deservedly taking the man-of-the-match award.

Ashley-Cooper, meanwhile, must wish he could play at Twickenham every week. A year on from his debut here he produced another match-sealing try to go with the one from 12 months ago. If his Movember 'tache looks droopy, nothing else about his game does.

Johnson hasn't ever asked for patience, and he probably never will - it's not in his nature. Neither did he seek to hide behind the injury problems that have laid waste to his first-choice squad.

At the same time, his record as England manager does not make encouraging reading. He has now lost seven matches and won five; more tellingly, his England have only beaten sides ranked above them twice in 10 attempts.

"Our discipline had been very good, we'd stolen a few turnovers, but we came off the intensity before half-time and gave them the momentum, and these things build," he said afterwards.

"The second half we struggled to get out of our half, and when we did, we gave the ball back a little too easily and invited pressure back on ourselves. The try that killed us - we'd stolen the line-out ball and yet they scored in the corner.

"They are a team who have come straight out of a Test match against the All Blacks, straight out of a Tri-Nations series, and that probably told in the end a little bit. They were that little bit slicker, maybe that little bit more used to the pace of Test match rugby."

Johnson will be delighted with the performances from Wilkinson and Moody, happy with the impact made by replacements James Haskell, Courtney Lawes and Paul Hodgson, and content with the first full outing for Shane Geraghty.

While the Northampton centre had his flaky moments - witness the mishit left-foot chip that nearly led to a Wallabies score in the corner - the step and break that preceded it and a couple of other darts justified the selection.

Johnson also claimed afterwards that this experimental and callow side will be better for the experience of Saturday.

"It's like the opening game of the season if you're a club side," he said. "You do all that pre-season and then you lose the first game, it feels like the end of the world - but you wake up the next day and you've got the rest of the season ahead of you."

He's right. At the same time, Australia are also an evolving team. Before this match they were on a streak far worse than England's, the pressures on Deans much greater than those on Johnson.

They also had to deal with the jet-lag of a long flight over from Tokyo six days ago, while the Tri-Nations experience cuts both ways - one man's toughened-up is another man's battered and bruised.

They too have had injuries, not least to key man Berrick Barnes, yet the debut centre pairing of Quade Cooper and Digby Ioane looked Test class and hardened.

"The blokes really dug in there today," said skipper Rocky Elsom. "We held our composure and we wore them down, and I was really happy about that."

Australia have now won five of the last seven meetings between the two teams. For Johnson, whose reputation as a player was built on the dismantling of southern hemisphere superiority, it is one of several troubling statistics.

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 how much the 30-year-old Wilkinson has changed. But in some ways, he is exactly as he has always been.

Steve Thompson, 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."

When the man in question finally emerges, long after most of his team-mates have headed off for an afternoon kip, he looks eerily as he did on the famous night in Sydney six years ago. Gone is the shaggy hair and hangdog expression of his last appearance in an England jersey; back is the short hair, a glowing tan and a sunnier disposition to match.

When he came on as sub at inside-centre against Ireland 18 months ago and found himself being lectured by Danny Cipriani, most assumed that his stellar if sadly stunted international career was coming to an end. That he has made it back, and healthy and in form to boot, has left him appreciating everything he is experiencing.

"When you set the goal to play sport at the highest level, these are the things it's all about," he says. "The opportunity to play against the best, put yourself to the test and ask where am I, where do I need to be - that's enormous."

Does he feel under less pressure than he used to?

"I've always tried to look at pressure in so many different ways, so I can understand what it really does. You desperately want to do well, but it can work against you if you let it.

"There's a way of looking at the game when you've had that experience, and the more that onus is put on you, the wider your view of the game and the bigger the picture in your head.

"When the whistle goes you have a little three-metre circumference around you during the game, and the ability to step out of that is huge.

"Most of the time you're dealing with what's happening in that little circle around you, but if you've got guys who can step back in the middle of the game, out of that frantic bubble, and see what's really happening, that can have a really big impact on the game."

Thompson credits his move to Brive as a key factor in his surprise comeback to international rugby, and thinks Wilkinson may have benefited from his own change of scenery in exactly the same way.

"He'd had all those injuries at Newcastle, he'd had all those pressures on his shoulders, and suddenly he's gone away and tried something completely different," says Thompson. "He looks so much happier now than he used to."

Wilkinson, as you'd expect, is more analytical, but it is clear that the old obsession with self-improvement remains.

"There will be hundreds of situations round the field at different times involving different players, some which you've prepared for and some you've never seen before," he explains.

"I guess that as you go along you try to fill your tool-box, so that when you face these circumstances you have more options to choose from.

"That's a big aim, and that's what makes me a spectator, watching rugby league or other sports at home on TV. You think - if I could add that to my repertoire...

"When you've done something a few times it starts to feel more natural. Eventually you do it more instinctively, but that's a slow process. Luckily I've had that a bit this season - I'm learning on the run, and I'm trying to learn from guys like Shane Geraghty and Matt Banahan."

He pauses and smiles. "About being much bigger and running much faster, for example."

From all accounts, Wilkinson has been throwing himself into training this week with the same intensity that he brought to sessions as a callow 19-year-old back in 1998. There has been little thought about protecting his famously fragile body, so much so that the coaches have occasionally had to have a quiet word.

"Jonny is the best tackler in the squad, and that includes our back row," says assistant coach Mike Ford. "In his desire to cover every position and every scenario on the field, there are very few better than him in that regard.

"I caught him at training trying to cover the open-side and going back down the blind-side, and I said, 'Listen, we have got that covered'.

"I explained why and he bought into it and the next couple of plays he stayed where he was. It's like a jigsaw with Jonny - he needs to know where every piece fits. The more he gets confidence in the system, the more he will stay where he is."

Wilkinson nods when he is asked about it. "A lot of that is my natural competitive side when I'm on the field," he says.

"The game is full of goodness knows how many individual processes that you need to get right. When you break it down to that, you realise it's about performing as best you can second by second.

Wilkinson and Shane Geraghty will be paired together in midfield for the first time on Saturday

"It's funny - there's the outside view of things - the key factors, the enormous event. But from the inside it's about going out there prepared, taking it step by step, finding that buzz and intensity and looking to maintain the development through the game that will take you to the end result.

"You might talk about key players, but once the match starts, it's the players you've got round you. When I played with Mike Catt, there would be times when people would be saying I'd had a good game, but I'd thought I'd done nothing - all I'd done was listen to the guy outside me."

Wilkinson is clearly excited about his midfield pairing with Shane Geraghty, who developed under Catt's tutelage at London Irish before impressing with his new club Northampton this season.

"No-one had been through as much as Catty in rugby, and learned how to see the game so well, but Shane seems to have a lot of that instinctively," says Wilkinson.

"The way Shane's playing now shows that he has that bigger picture. Looking at what he's doing in training, and speaking to the guys at Northampton I was with at Newcastle, he's got the all-round game. Because he's so prominent in every attack that's launched, people might assume there might be a weakness elsewhere, but as far as I can see he's a solid guy."

And what of Australia? Wilkinson's first match against them might have been a horror-show - 76-0 on the 'Tour of Hell' - but his last two defined his career, winning the 2003 World Cup in one and knocking the Wallabies out in the 2007 quarter-finals in the other.

"I could have woken up this morning not knowing where I was, but I knew from how I felt that there was something big going on this weekend," he says.

"It's always special because they're always up there at the top of the world game. When I think about Australia, I think of a certain professionalism, and a major strength in that tactically they can work better than any other team. You have to be 100% on your toes - as soon as you're not, they'll pull you apart."

And the drop-goal? He doesn't think about that?

Wilkinson looks surprised. "That might be the last thing I would think of," he says, seriously.

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.

Johnson, sitting sternly at the bridge of an upmarket Surrey hotel just round the corner from England's training headquarters, is an obdurate combination of calm and combative.

Martin Johnson is not willingly accepting criticism of his England team

With his trusty captain Steve Borthwick on his left-hand side and a flotilla of journalists at anchor around him, he repels all attempted attacks with consummate ease.

"England are notoriously slow starters...." begins one skirmish, and Johnson has his sights trained in a flash.

"We won our first game last year," he growls. "Are you saying the years before that?"

The chap tries again. "Well, traditionally England have..."

"I'm not sure you can say traditionally. Look at the All Blacks this season. They didn't play so well at the start, had a few injuries, lost to France. We're all more comfortable as a team in what we're doing. Teams are always going to improve as they play together and train together."

It happens again when Borthwick is repeatedly asked how much more competitive England will be this month than they were in the corresponding run of fixtures a year ago.

Borthwick, as is his style, talks about "aiming to do our very best" and "controlling what we can control".

"But how much more competitive?" he is asked again. He has another go, in the same sort of language, and is interrupted again.

Johnson wades into the fray without a second thought. "We'll see, won't we?" he says with a thumping glare. "We were beating Australia with about an hour gone, weren't we?"

"But you were losing at the final whistle," replies the brave assailant.

"Well, we'll see," rumbles Johnson. "We'll find out at the end of the match - that's why we play the game."

Australia sail into Saturday's match with a miserable sequence of results in their wake. Robbie Deans' men have lost six of their last seven Tests, been beaten seven times on the bounce by the All Blacks and finished bottom of the Tri-Nations, but Johnson has seen too much in his stellar career to walk blithely into a daft headline.

"They play the top two teams in the world a lot; they've beaten South Africa this year. It's going to be harder to get wins. They're used to playing at a very high level, so there's no way we're going to read anything into those losses.

"They're a pretty young side, but they've been very competitive. They've been winning them at certain stages but not been able to close them out. South Africa were the team who have done that best this year; before that it was the All Blacks.

"That's where you want to get to - be the team that finds the way to win the close ones in the last 10 minutes, and they've been very close in a few games. We've got no doubt as to the severity of the test we'll face at the weekend."

Johnson is not a man, it is fair to say, who goes big on public displays of emotion. Pretty much only time that brooding mask has cracked since he took over as England manager was when Danny Care got himself sin-binned in Dublin last February and was nearly keel-hauled as a result.

Just as this week's announcement that he has been voted Player of the Century in a new public poll failed to have him cracking open the champagne, so the loss of his entire first-choice front row has not left him drowning his sorrows.

"Delon (Armitage) last year got his opportunity through injury - now he finds himself injured, and someone else gets the chance," he says. "From the coaches' point of view, we want continuity as much as we can get it, but there are always going to be changes.

"Hopefully these injuries are an exceptional period, and by the Six Nations we'll be in the 90% region of who we can pick from."

Neither does Johnson look the slightest bit bothered by criticisms from some quarters that England have failed to make sufficient progress under his stewardship.

Former Australia star Michael Lynagh reckons that Johnson "desperately" needs a win on Saturday ("Last year's autumn internationals weren't great, the Six Nations weren't outstanding, and he's been in the job for over a year"). England also probably have only 22 games until their opening fixture in the next World Cup. At the same point in the cycle before Johnson's successful 2003 World Cup campaign, England were both more settled and more consistent than they are now.

"We're getting better," he says calmly, "but improvement is a continual thing. We've got some experienced older guys back - Moody, Thompson, Wilkinson - and then you can factor in the ones who are coming through, like Shane Geraghty and Matt Banahan. You've got a good mix there."

Johnson has had referee Wayne Barnes working with his squad in training this week, aiming to cut down on the number of yellow cards that plagued them during his first year in charge. He has also spoken in depth to Bryce Lawrence, the man who will be in charge at Twickenham this weekend. "We've done a pretty thorough job in that area," he says with obvious satisfaction.

The key battle, he is certain, will come in a theatre of conflict that he used to relish as a younger combatant.

"The breakdown is a huge part of it. If they're winning quick ball and are able to attack off that, they're going to put any team under pressure. But it's the same with us - if we can win quick ball and get over the gain line, we're going to be in the game.

"You've got to be smart in that area and you've got to be effective. You watch the best in the world do it and they take it to the limit. If you're making an offensive tackle and you're knocking blokes back, you're in the forefront. If they're coming through shoulders and gaps, you're going to struggle to slow that down."

Johnson, be in no doubt about it, expects every man to do his duty.

It's not his carbon fibre bike, or something he's eaten, or some new trick in training that has somehow produced even more power in those famous quads.

The weapon is a mild-mannered 56-year-old chap from the north-east of England who, by his own admission, knows "next to nothing" about professional cycling and has never once cycled round a velodrome.

Steve Peters is the British team's psychiatrist, the Oliver Sacks of cycling. He has variously been described as a "genius" (Dave Brailsford) and "the reason I am riding today" (Vicky Pendleton). "Without Steve I don't think I could have brought home the triple golds from Beijing," Hoy has said.

"I do get phone calls from cyclists in the middle of the night," laughs Peters. "But at the end of the day, that's what I'm here for. I can catch my sleep up some other time."

Since the record-breaking successes of the British cyclists in Beijing, however, he is a man in demand. Like his boss Brailsford, he has been tapped up by other countries and other sports, and like head coach Shane Sutton, he will be trackside for every minute of the action over the next three days.

"On the day of competition a lot of people start to lose it," explains Peters, perched high in the stands at the Manchester velodrome, cyclists hammering round the banked boards behind him like gaudy clockwork toys.

"Anxiety starts getting the better of them. They start saying things like, 'I really don't want these feelings, I really don't want these thoughts, and they're stopping me from competing at my best'.

"Chris is a very anxious man at times. In the keirin, his chimp can threaten to take over six or seven times."

Ah yes. The chimp. Peters has a way with animal-based metaphor - he once said all elite athletes could be categorised as Labradors, Rottweilers, Alsatians or poodles - but it's his depiction of the chimp as the irrational, emotional side of someone's personality that is the most striking.

"When I let my enormous chimp out," explained Hoy, "I started thinking like a pessimist. I had a tremendous sense of foreboding, wondering about the what ifs, about crashes and mistakes."

"Chris is an excellent pupil," says Peters. "There was a lot of motivation for him, a lot of engagement and a willingness to try, and then a lot of effort - so therefore a lot of success.

"Dave Brailsford was supervising me back in 2003, when I was just part-time. He's not that keen on psychiatry or psychology but he wanted me to show my worth, so he gave me Chris and said, 'Is there anything you can do here?'

"I wanted to give Chris the skills to ask why it was happening, why he was allowing it to happen and how he could get round that. So we worked on that for a long time. Before Athens, we rehearsed everything for hours. He probably did more hours of mental training than he did physical."

Athens was a tipping-point for both Hoy and Peters. The three riders in the kilo before Hoy all broke the world record. Rather than being overwhelmed by self-doubt and anxiety, Hoy used a step-by-step mental drill that the pair had been working on for months.

"It was only with about 10 metres to go until the finish line that he first looked up and thought, hey, I'm in an Olympic final," marvels Peters. "It was almost the perfect mental display.

"Once Dave saw what was going on, he said, 'Everyone has to meet you - this is powerful stuff!' but I didn't want that - I wanted them to approach me. After about three years pretty much everyone had knocked on the door and at least said, 'Can I just see what you're doing, see what you might do for me.'"

Peters speaks with a quiet self-confidence. While his career switch into sport was something he could never have envisaged ("It was an accident, really") he is absolutely certain in what he is doing.

"Some of the team don't need me. With other athletes it might be one per cent or nothing. But for the majority, being in control of their emotions can be the difference between success and failure."

Where Hoy overcame his chimp in Athens, Pendleton was unsaddled by hers. It is her subsequent successes that Peters seems most proud of.

"Vicky had the skills on the bike, the power and the ability, but what she couldn't do was control the fears and the anxieties, so when she came to competition she massively underperformed. She wanted to disengage, to actually get off the bike.

"What I wanted her to do was engage with her emotions, work on the mental skills so she could get back on the bike and fulfil her potential. If you wanted her to say what percentage difference her mental skills made, she's likely to say very high."

So what exactly does Peters do? Is there one simple piece of advice he could give to all amateur sportsmen to instantly improve their performance?

"There is no recipe," he says. "You're working with an individual mind that might take you anywhere. You, Tom, might tell me that the more people out there on a day of competition the better you feel, whereas someone else might say the direct opposite. It's a unique interpretation of your world and belief systems, and I have to work with that. It's very complex and it can take some time to unravel.

"I would get to know you really well, ask you what it is you want to do and why you can't get there. Everyone has unique beliefs or behaviours that are stopping them, so I would work on those things that are specific for you.

"Everyone comes in with different agenda. It might be, 'Can I communicate better with my coach,' 'Can I understand my discipline more easily,' 'Can I be a happier person,' 'Can I be more motivated'.

"I like to work half the time with the athlete and half the time with the coach. They're the experts. All I can do is oil the wheels, ask the coach what it is that he or she can't do."

Before each race this weekend, Peters will be trackside, ready to assist each rider in their own unique way.

"We use a structured five-stage mental warm-up, just as you would use a structured physical warm-up. They all want different things. Some want to chat to you while they're on the rollers, warming up; some just want you to say hello so they know you're around if they need you, others might give you a phone call.

"What I'm effectively doing is putting you in a zone where you want to be there, and you're ready to focus very quickly on your event."

Peters is in his ninth year with British cycling, his fifth full-time. As with many in the British set-up, from riders to coaches, he is aware of the need for fresh challenges after the outstanding results in Beijing.

Both Hoy and Pendleton could be forgiven for losing their hunger and motivation after achieving their career goals in the Laoshan Velodrome. Peters too could have stepped away, moved into a new and more lucrative area, but there are two big reasons why he intends to stay put for a while.

The first is Team Sky, the forthcoming British road-racing team that will make its Tour de France next summer. "Dave wants me to work in the same way, so that we have a psychological power base and can get optimum performances. I hope we can replicate our success on the track and win the Tour. It should happen."

The second is the people he has around him in Manchester. "I love this team. Dave is a personal friend, Shane Sutton (head coach) is a personal friend, Chris Boardman - we've all become friends. As long as we're all a team, and I don't get too old, I can't see myself moving on. I'm just a minion in the system, but it's a fantastic atmosphere working here."

PS For an interesting blog from my colleague Matt Slater on the proposed changes to the London 2012 track cycling programme, click here.

I'm at Gateshead International Stadium - the time for training is over. The conditioning work with Dean Macey is done, the throwing advice of Goldie Sayers and Steve Backley in the past. Daley Thompson, sadistic architect of the most brutal session I've ever been put through, cannot help me now.

The nerves are clanging like fire alarms. The head is full of worry and doubt. I haven't done enough training. I'll forget how to pole vault. I'll mis-count my run-ups, land the javelin tail-first, catch a trailing leg on those monstrous high hurdles and bury my nose in abrasive orange track.

Worst of all, there's the hamstring. After six weeks missed training I've only been running again for four weeks. Two of those merely involved gentle jogs. I've just got to hope that it holds together for at least one more afternoon.

The 6pm start time seems hours away, and is then suddenly upon you. There's time to shake the hands of the four officials and wish fellow competitor and multi-event veteran John Stacey bon chance, and then the whistle goes.

One hour to complete a decathlon. On three months training, minus six weeks. Whose idea was this?

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Watch Tom in action in Gateshead. If the video above does not work, watch it here

Event 1 - 100m

Trackie bottoms off, spikes on, a walk to the blocks. Only when we turn to stare down the straight does the strength of the headwind become apparent. It's tugging at our vests, flapping the flags on the grandstand.

I settle in the blocks and think about Jurgen Hingsen, Daley's great German rival, who once false-started in the 100m three times and was thus a goner before he'd even begun. If I only make it five metres down the track, I'll at least be one up on him.

BANG! Drive drive drive, pump the arms, come up gradually and then run tall and relaxed. A dip on the line - I hope it was on the line, although it may have been two metres before it or two metres after - and a wave of relief.

Bill, official scorer for the day, shouts out the times - 13.1 seconds for John, 13.3 sec for me. It's much, much slower we'd both hoped for - I'd done a 12.8 sec in practice two days before, in trainers, not pushing flat-out - and John reckons the wind has cost us at lest a second each, but there's no time to dwell on it. The wind is what it is, and there are nine events to get through. Time to move on...

Points: 418

Event 2 - Long jump

This is one transition that makes sense. Having just done one sprint, this is simply a shorter one with a leap and leg-shoot at the end of it. The distance between the two in the stadium is also small - the runway starts around the 80m on the home straight. A brief pause to get the breath back, a slow stroll to the mark I'd left in silver tape earlier and we can go.

Three attempts allowed. The first is called at 4.40m. Steve Cram - former 1500m world champ, BBC commentator and trackside advisor - gives me a shout: "Six inches behind the board." I don't want to adjust the run-up too much - I'll probably come in faster on the second approach - but when the same shout comes again, moments after climbing out of the sand for another 4.40-ish, I gamble on moving the mark half a foot length in.

Different starting point, same result. Six inches behind the board, a jump of 4.51m. John pings out to 5.77m. On the downside, those extra centimetres could have meant decent points. On the upside, there are points on the board. And the hamstring is still in one stretchy piece.

Points: 292

Event 3 - Shot put

A jog over to the concrete circle, a quick change from spikes to trainers, and the first big error.

After a first attempt lobs out to 7.49m - steady enough from just a simple crouching technique, rather than a slide or step - the second feels twice as rhythmical and powerful. There's hip turn, a decent push with the chest and a final flick with the fingertips.

"Whoo-hoo!" I think, looking eagerly to the extending tape measure, and step happily out of the side of the circle. "Foul!" shouts official Bill.

Fordyce, you clown. That was an 8.50m you just threw away there. Another 50 points have slipped away. "Forget about it," warns John (11.11m). "We've got seven more events to come. Don't worry about anything but the one you're doing."

Points: 336

Event 4 - High jump

The potential disaster. I've done less training for the high jump than any other discipline, mainly because of the hammy - maybe three sessions in total. This now seems both laughable and disastrous in equal measure. Add to that coach Ian Grant's infamous, "You have no natural spring," comment, plus the extraordinary revelation from friend and colleague Ben Dirs that he once cleared 1.60m en route to becoming Havering schools under-16 champion, and the pressure is weighing me down like lead laces.

The bar is set at 1.30m. This feels humiliating - if the regulations only permitted it, I could clear that with a Superman dive - but not as humiliating as asking for 1.20m as my opening height and being told that the supports don't go that low.

Bill tells us that we're only 25 minutes in. There's time for a practice jump. I knock the bar off.

Come on, Fordyce. A child could clear this. Concentrate.

In we come, lean away from the bar, drive up with the right knee and arm, flick up the hips - clear!

With the clock ticking I gamble on going straight to 1.40m. It is a gamble that fails by the thickness of my shorts. Twice the shoulders and hips clear the bar, twice the cloth brushes it off. John puts my lack of ability into stark contrast with a casual leap and flip over 1.81m.

Four down, six to go, and I need to start clawing back some points. And some breath.

Points: 250

Event 5 - 400m

"Don't go off too fast," coach Grant had warned. "Run it evenly, and aim for somewhere between 58 seconds and 60 seconds. If you go too hard, you'll have nothing left for the hurdles, let alone the rest of the competition. Hold something back."

With John in the lane outside me, I try to keep the pace steady. The wind doesn't help - it pushes us down the back straight and then slaps us in the face coming off the top bend - but there feels like gas left in the tank to push on through the line.

Keep it relaxed, don't flail the arms about, stay upright. 58 seconds dead for me, 58.3 for John. At last an event that feels like it went well.

Was the pace even? Nope - I ran 30 seconds for the first 200 and 28 for the second - but it wasn't flat out either. 29 minutes gone, halfway through, still alive.

Points: 484

Event 6 - 110m hurdles

This was the bit everyone on the blogs had been warning me about. There's a reason why a normal decathlon allows a night's rest between the 400m and the hurdles, and it's called lactic acid. Going straight from a one-lap sprint to 10 barriers that are 3ft 6in high is asking for trouble. And pain.

It's also the other event to which I've been able to dedicate the least training time. Because of injury and the lack of hurdles at major Test cricket venues (covering the Ashes series might be a delight, but it's not the ideal preparation for a decathlon) I've only been able to squeeze in three hurdling sessions all summer. Neither have I ever before gone over a full set of 10. The most we've done in training is five.

We walk slowly back down the home straight to our blocks. The legs feel ominously wobbly. The hurdles look horribly high.

There aren't many shortcuts in sport. You tend to get the result your preparations deserve. So it is with my hurdling horror story. The headwind doesn't help - rather than leaning forward over the hurdles, I'm being pushed upright - but the technique is not there to cope with it.

With each flight the height of the barrier seems to grow. With each leap the number of hurdles left to leap seems undiminished. The only thing that changes is the spring left in my legs.

It's like trying to jump out of glue. For a moment I feel as if I am on some sort of hurdling treadmill, the barriers coming towards me again and again on an endless loop.

Crack. My trail leg clips the penultimate hurdle and throws me off balance. Crack-thump - my leading leg clouts the final one, the trail leg follows suit and I stagger sideways, only staying on my feet thanks to a Flatleyesque shimmy-shammy.

23.1 seconds. It's a disgrace. Even typing that time makes me feel ashamed. 23 seconds?

John tries to cheer me up. "I ran 18.6," he says. "That wind was a nightmare. That gust on the fourth flight... You can knock at least a second off the time."

I'd like to. One second quicker would be worth a massive 100 points. It doesn't matter. I can't.

Points: 274

Event 7 - Discus

There's a strange feeling of relief as we stride to the discus circle, 35 minutes gone. While that hurdles clocking is an insult to the sport, it is at least out of the way. From this point on, the exhaustion might grow, but the events can't get any harder.

Into the circle, a slow-motion discus-free run-through of the type that I've been practising in my kitchen for weeks, and three wind-up flings.

It's nothing spectacular - there's been no time to learn a full rotational technique - but 19.62m will do. I even remember to leave the circle by the back. John spins his best effort out to 27.06, and we jog over to the last of the big scary ones - the pole vault.

Points: 265

Event 8 - Pole vault

This is where it could all go horribly, painfully wrong. I've enjoyed the pole vault training more than any other - you can't beat falling from a great height onto a soft mat - but neither can you guarantee that you'll fall on that mat in the first place. "A friend of mine died doing the pole vault," Daley had told me matter-of-factly back in May.

The 14ft pole is waiting on the runway, the bar set at 1.80m. I pick it up, rest it in my hands and suddenly realise that I'm not feeling nervous any more. I actually know I can do it. Beyond that, I feel completely confident I can clear way more than this.

The run-up feels inch-perfect, the plant good, the forward movement with the hands spot on. I swing over the bar, push the pole back the way it came and land happily on my back. Easy.

Time, however, is short. I can't mess about increasing the height by small increments. It's 30cm at a go or bust.

2.10m. Same run-up, same technique, same result. "Miles over," says the watching Cram. "2.40m!" shouts the always enthusiastic Allison Curbishley.

2.40m it is. This time the technique gets ropey - I'm thinking too much about the bar, rather than concentrating on getting up there - but with the help of a novel helicopter spin at the apex, I drop over.

It might be the first time the rotational style has been used in the pole vault, but it's done the job. John goes clear at 3m and we throw in a high-five that's only half ironic.

Eight down, two to go.

Points: 220

Event 9 - Javelin

Did I say that nothing more could go wrong? I lied. Even after Goldie Sayers' training session, I've still been throwing the javelin like a cricketer on the deep midwicket fence - elbow low, fingers going round the side, the jav rotating through its central point and falling woefully short. If it fails to land nose-first, it doesn't matter how far it goes - there'll be no points on the board.

Safety first. I can't afford three no-throws, so I sack off the run-up and take a standing one. It looks alright - straightish, through the point - but, as if the shot put shocker had never happened, I ruin it by letting my toe just touch the front line.

"Foul!" shouts Bill.

Two throws left. Allison is waving her phone at me. It's triple Olympic medallist Steve Backley. I can hear him chuckling down the line. "Throw it further!" is the big man's advice. There's no time to reply - we're 55 minutes into the hour - but the message gets through. The next standing throw is both legal and OK - 21m.

I might as well give it the full welly on the last attempt. After John sends one out to 36.83m, I do my best Backley impression and bag a slightly improved 26.01m.

His British record is safe, but so are my points. "Three minutes left!" shouts Bill. "Get yourselves over to the 1500m start!"

Points: 243

Event 10 - 1500m

We are exhausted. The legs have all the strength of limp celery. The head, however, feels great. I know I can run 1500m without fainting, fouling or falling. We are almost there.

"Steady on the first two laps, and then push on," is Cram's sage advice. "Go out too hard and you'll have nothing left."

"10 seconds left!" warns Bill, and the gun goes. It would be easy to let it drift from here - the lungs are smoked and the concentration wobbling - but I want to finish in style, and tuck in behind 1500m specialist Chris.

The first lap feels OK, the second tougher. It's the third when things really start to bite and spit. The legs aren't responding, and the voice on my shoulder telling me to just jog it round instead grows louder and more insistent with every step.

Saved by the bell. Its ting-a-ling ring fires fresh energy into the shattered muscles. I push down the back straight, try to wind it up on the final bend and then lob everything left into the pan.

My eyes are shut, my face grimacing. I must look like the new king of all idiots. I don't care. I fall across the line and spend an unquantifiable period of time on my back, trying to breathe. I hear John cross the line and stagger over to give him the decathlete's embrace.

4 mins 43.4 seconds for me, 6:30.6 for John. I've actually gone faster than either new world champion Trey Hardee or the legendary Roman Sebrle did in Berlin a week earlier. It's taken until the final event of the day, but I've finally produced a performance that doesn't make me want to hide my head in shame.

More than that, we've made it. I might be rubbish, and I'm almost certainly about to be sick, but the task is complete. I am a decathlete.

Points: 661

Total points: 3,443

Medals only ever tell part of the story. What can be more revealing is the number of finalists a country produces, and the placings athletes achieve in those finals.

Before these championships, BBC statistician Mark Butler compiled a table that compared the British performances at all the Worlds so far. Under his system, one point is awarded to an athlete who finishes eighth, two for seventh and three for sixth, all the way up to eight for a first place.

On that basis, Britain scored a total of 34 points in Helsinki four years ago. At the last Worlds in Osaka the tally was better - 61. And in Berlin? It has risen still further, to 80.5 (Mark B awards half marks in the event of a tied place, whereas the IAAF version does not).

That figure is the best return a British team has had in 16 years. Not since the glories of Stuttgart, where Linford Christie, Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell all won gold, has a GB squad scored so highly.

This gives a better indication of strength across the board than medals on their own can do. For GB to score almost twice as well as they did at the Worlds in Paris in 2003 is heartening news with the London Olympics just three summers away.

Eleven of Van Commenee's athletes produced personal bests in Berlin. Not only does that speak of a progression in physical ability, it also indicates an aptitude for producing the goods under the most intense pressure.

Phillips Idowu's lifetime best to snatch the triple jump gold from his Olympic nemesis Nelson Evora is perhaps the most high-profile example, but there also breakthough performances from less heralded names like Will Sharman, Dai Green and Emily Freeman.

"It's a very positive step moving towards 2012," says double world champion and now BBC pundit Colin Jackson. "This is a young team which is building and developing together, and that is great to see.

"There are the building blocks in place for them to develop over the next few years - the European Championships next summer, and then the next Worlds in 2011. I'm excited to see what this team can produce."

This was a team that exceeded what most observers thought an optimistic target without two of its most recent world champions, Christine Ohuruogu and Paula Radcliffe, winning a medal between them.

It was also without three athletes who, going previous form and the marks produced by the medallists in Berlin, would have been fancied to make the podium had they been fit - Kelly Sotherton in the heptathlon, Mara Yamauchi in the marathon and Tasha Danvers in the 400m hurdles.

Factor in the absence of Olympic high jump silver medallist Germaine Mason, who injured his ankle a week before Berlin, and the picture seems even rosier.

What Van Commenee will be want to ensure, however, is that Berlin does not come to be viewed in future years as false dawn.

"That's a dramatic improvement over the last few years, and it's encouraging and very impressive, but you have to look at it as something to build on," says multiple world and Olympic champion Michael Johnson. "The concern is what happens from here.

"You can't be content with what you have. We saw lots of good things in Athens, but the foot wasn't kept on the pedal, and my concern going forward would be that the same thing might happen again."

Johnson is also wary of over-celebrating a tally boosted by two relay successes.
"This is an individual sport. In 2004 the 4x100m relay team won the Olympic gold medal and that did nothing for either one of those guys from an individual standpoint.

"There are medals to be won. There are athletes who have the ability to get in finals that don't get in finals and that continues to be a problem.

"You can't solve that by, at the end of the championships, by bringing home a medal and saying, "We're doing OK here". I think that would be a mistake.

"The 4x100m men brought home a medal to be proud of, but realistically you have to keep that in perspective if you want to improve. If you're fine with where you are and that's all you want to strive for then great but there's more to be had."

Encouragingly, a new generation of British talent has also started to emerge this summer.

The team sent to the World Youth Championships returned with four golds, while 15 medals were won at the European Juniors and 18 at the European Under-23s.

Van Commenee is nothing if not a realist. There are still substantial problems to be solved in British athletics, not least in terms of deciding whether athletes should be made to train together in concentrated groups or be allowed to work alone with their own coaches.

But his task leading up to 2012 will seem just a little bit easier this week than it did 10 days ago.

As the Olympiastadion empties all around me, and random punters try to sneak past security to have a quick dash down the distinctive blue track (I'll be having a crack as soon as I spot an opening), thoughts turn to the various deeds of derring-do we've witnessed over the last week and a half.

What made Berlin so special? Which performances stood out from the rest, and which characters will forever be associated with the class of '09?

8. The crowds
More than half a million people packed out the stadium over the nine days, with three times that number lining the streets for the two marathons. Those who came were as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as any world championships has ever had. Wunderbar.

7. Steve Hooker
Struck down by injury, fearful he wouldn't be able to manage a single jump, the Aussie Olympic champ pulled one enormous effort from nowhere to snatch a stunning pole vault gold. Did it make up for what was going on simultaneously at The Oval? Let's not be silly.

6. The Olympiastadion
Forget the identikit steel-and-glass stadiums that are going up all over the world - the stone-columned pensioner has twice the ambience and a hundred times the heritage of any other track and field venue.

5. Kenenisa Bekele
Wasn't his training supposed to be ruined by injury? The 10,000m win was sweet and stylish enough, but the late, late kick in the 5,000m to see off Bernard Lagat and win the only global title that has previously eluded him was the stuff of legend.

4. Berlino the Bear
I've just realised I've got an eight-foot tall bear higher in the rankings than Kenenisa Bekele. That seems like madness, but then again, so did pretty much everything the best mascot in memory served up. Anyone need an excuse to watch the Melaine Walker hurdle disaster again?

3. Germany's throwing successes
A world champs needs a whole heap of gold medals for the host nation to truly come to life, and Steffi Nerius and Robert Harting delivered in rabble-rousing fashion. Almost every final in the throws, men's or women's, was an old-fashioned ding-dong delight.

2. Jess Ennis and the rebirth of the Brits
As the GB team left for Germany, some of its biggest names back home injured, Charles van Commenee's target of five medals seemed ambitious and unrealistic. That it'll return with six, two of the them gold, made this Britain's best Worlds since the legendary deeds of Christie, Jackson and Gunnell in Stuttgart 16 years ago.

1. Jesse Owens' granddaughter presents the long jump medals

Owens' shadow fell across these championships from start to finish, and everyone from Usain Bolt to the USA kit manufacturer paid tribute to him. When Marlene Dortch handed the gold medal to Dwight Phillips, there were lumps in throats all around the famous old arena.

 

Now, I know what you're thinking - there's someone missing. Here's the reasoning:
(a) if he'd been allowed in the main list there wouldn't have been room for anyone else, and
(b) he's clearly in a class of his own anyway

Bolt's Best Bits

8. Trying to do a breakdancing wave with Daniel Bailey moments before a World 100m final, and then laughing when it broke on the unresponsive shoulders of Richard Thompson

7. Warming up for the 200m in a t-shirt which had the words "Ich bin ein Berlino" scrawled on it in pen. Berlino later returned the favour by donning a t-shirt that read "Ich bin ein Bolt".

6. Racing Berlino down the back straight after his 200m world record, and letting the bear do what no human could do and beat him

5. Looking straight down the television camera's lens on the line for the 100m and uttering the immortal phrase, "I'm ready. Are you ready? Let's go!"

4. Not breaking the world record in the 4x100m relay final, and therefore putting his earlier deeds in the individual sprints into even sharper context. It doesn't happen automatically, you know.

3. Having 65,000 fans sing 'Happy Birthday' to him as he stood on the podium to receive his 200m gold medal. A stadium unites in adoration.

2. Running the greatest 200m race in history.

1. Running the greatest 100m race in history. Can I decide which one was better? No. But I'll remember both for as long as I live.

Not always. Andreas Thorkildsen, javelin superstar and pride of Norway, has a big empty space in his trophy cabinet. And he's rather keen on filling it.

"A lot of people expect me to win," he says. "I also expect me to win. But first I have to do the work."

Thorkildsen, who in his spare time models for Swedish football international turned fashion designer Martin Dahlin, knows that a world championship gold is well overdue.

While his second place to Andrus Varnik in Helsinki four years ago could be excused as the growing pains of a burgeoning talent - his gold with a personal best in Athens the year before had been such a surprise that he described it as "completely insane" - his defeat in Osaka in 2007 by great Finnish rival Tero Pitkamaki hurt like hell.

Berlin is far from a happy hunting ground for Thorkildsen, too. After Pitkamaki beat him here in the Olympiastadion in June, he told reporters, "I don't like this place."

This week, perched in a rooftop hotel with panoramic views across the city, he was in more conciliatory mood. "It's been up and down for me here, but the difference is that this is my first time here for a championship. There is a Golden League meeting almost every week, but this is different."

Can Thorkildsen turn it around in Sunday's final, and if so, how? Four-time European champion Steve Backley, here as a pundit for BBC TV and Radio 5 Live, used to warm-weather train with the Norwegian in South Africa during the winter.

"He didn't throw very well in qualifying, but he's coming into form," says Backley. "He's got a very, very stable technique that stands up well to pressure, and his temperament is extremely good. Put all that together and you'd say he's likely to win - but he also knows that there are a couple of guys in the final who could drop a bomb and put it out of his reach."

What makes Thorkildsen stand out, believes Backley, is his immense physical and mental strength.

"If you divide javelin throwers into two categories - the guys who have massive power and can bully it out there, and the guys who use their long levers and really run at it so their bodies become like a bow - he epitomises the latter group," he says.

"He is an unbelievable physical specimen. He's very, very strong - he might look wiry compared to some throwers, but he can bench-press 190kg, and he has amazing elastic strength. He can jump and sprint fantastically well, and is gymnastic too - I've seen him holding a handstand on the parallel bars.

"In some ways he's similar to Usain Bolt, because he's impossible to faze. When you're in the call-room before a big final, it's incredibly stressful, and most athletes are trying to get in the zone. But Andreas will be chatting and joking away about the weather.

"He's got some unusual ways of dealing with stuff, and can come out with some strong opinions. But it's all about creating the right atmosphere to throw to your maximum, and he can do that very well.

"Most javelin throwers peak at about 27 and a half years old, and Andreas is almost exactly that. He's a class act."

Thorkildsen was born with the genes for success. His father Tomm, who began coaching his son when he was just 11 years old, had a very respectable javelin PB of 71.64m, while his mother Bente was Norwegian 100 metres hurdles champion in 1972.

In his way on Sunday stands a quartet of Finns, each of whom is capable of snatching that coveted world title away again.

Pitkamaki, who once threw a javelin so far left in a Golden League meet in Rome that he hit French long jumper Salim Sdiri and sent him to hospital in an ambulance, is in fine form, throwing a season's best of 87.79m in Lapinlahti just a few weeks ago.

Current Finnish champion Teemu Wirkkala comes into these championships having set a personal best last month, while Antii Ruuskanen and Tero Jarvenpaa will also be dangerous. Then there's the monster-throwing Latvian Vadims Vasilevskis, one of the 'bomb-droppers' referred to by Backley.

"Me, Tero and Vadims were all born in 1982, and have done the junior championships together and continued on to the major championships - we've been competing against each other for nearly 10 years now," says Thorkildsen.

"While we are rivals - we all want to beat each other - we are also friendly. We are down at the track for such a long time, and we have fun also."

And the combined presence of the four Finns? He's the only Norwegian in the 12-strong final. "I'm my own team."

If Thorkildsen is looking for lucky omens, only one man - the legendary Jan Zelezny - has ever managed to retain a javelin world title. If he prefers to rely on personal experience - well, there's something for him there, too.

"I threw my biggest throw of the year in Beijing last summer, so I'm capable of throwing long on the big occasions. In the championships, you have to throw when you are ready."

One of the most enjoyable aspects of these world championships has been the wonderful quality and reception given to the throwing events. Almost every final, from men's shot to women's hammer via the men's discus and women's javelin, has been followed avidly and appreciated by the knowledgeable Berlin crowd.

Thorkildsen could not hope for a better place to break his Worlds duck.

In theory, it should be the easiest thing in the world. The best decathletes on the planet are here. There are top-class coaches and retired legends all over the shop. The entire city is geared up for track and field.

But that's the problem. Every facility in the city is in use. There is simply no room for the casual amateur looking to work on his 8.3m shot put or 25m javelin (I know. Not good).

If I was simply training for a 1500m, it wouldn't be so bad. The Tiergarten is a fantastic park right in the heart of Berlin, full of shaded trails that are perfect for interval work. What it doesn't have is a help-yourself stash of javelins, a pole vault bed and a long jump pit filled with the soft golden sand.

There are some compensations, of course. Since the hamstring started to heal up about three weeks ago, I've found myself see-sawing between happiness that I might still be able to compete and bug-eyed terror at the prospect of how wrong it could go, but having watched Jess Ennis in full multi-event magic mode and then been glued to the decathlon proper inside the Olympiastadion, all that's changed.

I know I'm not going to be very good. I know that I'm probably going to embarrass myself, and almost certainly not do this great event justice. But by golly I've got to have a crack at it.

Did Yunior Diaz let doubt cloud his mind before bashing out that remarkable 46.15 seconds in the 400m late on Wednesday night? Did Roman Sebrle think twice before attempting another pole vault with just 10 seconds left on his allotted time? Did Trey Hardee worry about his exhausted legs when the 1500m threatened to leave him flat on his back?

I think not.

Then there are the precious nuggets of advice I've been offered from all corners. Before I left home for Germany there was a fantastic three-hour session with blog user Leo down at Mile End stadium (memo to self: if there's to be a second decathlon, make those Thursday sessions with Leo a weekly occurrence), a random throwing session with a bloke named Pete who I spotted practising at the Millennium stadium in Battersea Park as I did 400m reps, and a spontaneous javelin masterclass with Toni Minichiello - coach to Steve Backley and Jess Ennis - on the way back from a Berlin bar the night of Phillips Idowu's triple jump gold.

What I need now is more help. We need to work out how much time I should allot to each part of the challenge, and where the rests should be taken. At the moment the plan is to take it easy on the first attempt at the jumps and throws to ensure I get a score for each, and then hit it progressively harder - but should I just go for broke from the off?

Should I split the hour into roughly equal chunks of 10, or get the first four events done within 20 minutes to give myself a long enough gap between 400m and hurdles to get rid of at least some of the lactic?

And will the cross-country spikes I last wore for the Nationals on Parliament Hill back in February do the job on the track - or should I switch between them and racing flats as time and events allow?

Answers on a electronic postcard down below.

We've all seen the black-and-white clips of Owens winning his famous four golds, watched Leni Riefenstahl's infamous footage and seen the stills of the Nazi salutes on the Olympic medal rostrum. But what was it like to be there?

There are very few people left alive today who can tell us, but Rudi Thiel and Werner Textor are among their number.

Rudi was just eight in 1936, a sport-obsessed local boy who was taken to the Olympics as a surprise treat by his father.

"I remember the evening of the opening ceremony," he told me this week, on the concourse at the stadium where he had stood so many years before. "We lived a kilometres south of the city, and the city was lit up like a big fireball - there were so many fireworks. I was the oldest of three children, and the fireworks were like war! Everyone was afraid, and we all hid in my bed. That was my first impression."

Werner, now 89 years old and confined to a wheelchair, was a 16-year-old schoolboy when the Games began.

"My job was to be a messenger," he recalled when I visited him in a nursing home in the Schonefeld district of the city. "In those days there were no mobile phones, so the organisers used students from the local schools who were interested in sport to help them out. When there was something that someone needed to know, I was sent to carry the news. We stayed in youth hostels around the stadium.

"The volunteers were selected according to what your sporting background was, and I liked handball, so I worked on that."

Memories of Owens have been everywhere this week. Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay have both paid tribute to their sprinting forefather. The American team have the initials JO on the breast of their team vests, and Owens' grand-daughter Marlene Dortch will present the long jump medals on Saturday evening.

"I remember seeing Jesse, " said Rudi. "We sat by the start of the 200 metres. I remember the roaring of the crowd, and everyone standing up and always cheering."

Werner got even closer. "I was there when Jesse Owens did the 100m, because there were no handball matches going on at the time, so I had the chance to be in the stadium. The things that Jesse Owens could do when he was running! At that time none of us had ever experienced those things before. I remember being so impressed."

How did the crowd react to Owens? The Berlin Olympics were designed by the Nazi government to showcase the superiority of the white Aryan race over the rest of the world. Owens' record-breaking victories in the two sprints, long jump and sprint relay were a resounding refutation of those ideals - was he treated as a villain as a result?

"For the people in the Olympiastadion, they did not care about politics - it was about sport," said Werner. "Everyone was cheering for him because of what he was able to do. It wasn't like today, when lots of people have gone fast; the crowd really appreciated what he could do.

"There was no antipathy at all for black people or Jewish people - there was no hatred from the German people. Jesse Owens was the star for the crowd, there's no two ways about it. They loved him."

"I have two very good memories of the atmosphere," agreed Rudi. "I remember how friendly it all was. It was great for a young boy. The Nazis and all that stuff - that wasn't in our minds."

Perhaps the most famous moment in the Games came during the long jump qualification. Owens was up against Carl 'Luz' Long, the German favourite. After two rounds, while Long had set a new Olympic record, Owens had been called for two fouls and looked certain to crash out.

"He missed it twice," recalled Werner. "He just went over the board, and it looked like he must go out. Then I saw Luz Long come over and talk to Owens. Later on I understood what those conversations were about. Luz told Owens some tips - that he was taking off from too close, and that he should move back a little. I remember thinking that they were competitors and rivals but they discussing how to do it better, they were helping each other."

Owens took Long's advice. With his third and final jump, he snatched a place in the final, where he out-jumped Long by 19 centimetres to snatch the gold and set another Olympic record. Long, despite being watched by Hitler himself, was the first to congratulate Owens and walked arm-in-arm to the changing-rooms with him.

Owens told reporters at the time: "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the twenty-four carat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment."

Werner remembers it clearly. "I was aware of the special nature of what I had seen. The moments between Owens and Luz were the most memorable thing I have ever seen in sport. Second? That is when Germany won the handball gold medal in 1936."

Owens and Long never met again, but they remained firm friends and kept in touch via letter until the outbreak of war. While Owens, snubbed by the authorities back in the US, fell into poverty, Long was conscripted into the German army. Wounded during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, he died three days later in a British military hospital.

Owens too is long gone, killed by lung cancer 29 years ago, but the two men's families have kept the transatlantic bond strong. When Owen's grand-daughter presents the medals on Saturday, she will be joined by Long's grandson Kai. The symbolism of the moment will be lost on nobody.

For Werner and Rudi, eyewitnesses to sporting and cultural history, the memories remain both pin-sharp and poignant.

"I would have loved to get an autograph," sighed Werner, "but things were very strict in Germany at that time. You had to stay where you were positioned, and you weren't allowed to move - so I couldn't ask for his signature or shake his hand. But I would have liked to."

Rudi, inspired by what he saw, went on to work within athletics in West Germany and then become a meet promoter. He counts Carl Lewis as a personal friend, and was in the stadium on Sunday night to watch Usain Bolt creat legend of his own.

"Jesse Owens is so important to my heart and to my work," he told me. "In 1985 I got in contact with the Jesse Owens Foundation, and I met Ruth Owens, Jesse's wife. She came to the athletics meeting here, and we were friends from the first moment until she passed away two years ago.

"My wish is that we make the Olympiastadion in Berlin the Jesse Owens Arena. Everyone in the world associates Berlin with Jesse Owens, so this would make sense.

"For me, sport is such an important thing to bring the world together. There are so many crazy things happening in the world, but in sport the world comes together. Muslims, Christians, Jews - they take the same races, they wish each other the best for competition. Only in sport."

The emails and Tweets have been arriving in their thousands, asking me to conduct the definitive sit-down interview with Berlino - his hopes and dreams, how he likes to kick back, whether there's a Mrs (or Mr) Berlino on the scene.

Sadly, since he's both (a) an eight feet tall bear, and (b) mute, this has proved impossible.

Of course, it's not all been plain sailing for the big guy. At the start of the championships his enthusiastic attempts to join in with the men's 10,000m had traditionalists throwing their stopwatches down in disgust.

But Berlino is nothing if not a battler. This is a bear who doesn't know the word defeat. To be fair he doesn't know any words (see the earlier mute revelation) but you get my drift.

First it was a (bear) hug with pole vault champion Anna Rogowska. Next up came a little dance-and-drop with javelin gold medallist Steffi Nerius. By the time he was hoisted onto the broad back of discus champ Robert Harting, his cult status was no longer in doubt.

Later there came the poses with Usain - who had sported a t-shirt with the words "Ich bin ein Berlino" scrawled on it in biro - followed by a 50m race down the back straight in the aftermath of Bolt's 200m demolition.

None of it, however, can compare with the piggyback ride he gave new 400m hurdles champion Melaine Walker. Berlino - there's a hurdle in the way. Berlino - you're getting mighty close to.... ooops.

Truly, we shall not see his like again.

Not until the next major sporting event, anyway.