It’s not easy to carpet Martin

IT WAS at the end of a pretty long chat when yours truly finally took a deep breath and asked the question that had hung over the conversation like a persistent storm cloud.

Martin Johnson was the interview subject, and despite a discrepancy between us of about seven inches, and four stone — not to the journalist’s advantage — the matter still had to be raised.

“What were you thinking of when you made the President of Ireland walk through the mud in Lansdowne Road back in 2003?”

Then I moved well away from the mobile phone and waited for the answer to beam through from the side of the motorway in England where Johnson was parked in his car.

Tomorrow the England World Cup-winning captain is back in Ireland, but in Croke Park, not Lansdowne Road. And he’s not team captain but team manager of an England side that is not going very well.

It would take a superhuman effort from most Irish, Welsh and Scottish rugby aficionados not to smile broadly as they watch England flail helplessly against a combination of poor results and looming overseas player drain.

It’s only a couple of years since there were serious suggestions that a lack of meaningful competition in the Six Nations meant England would have to start looking southwards to the likes of New Zealand and South Africa for serious challenges.

Nowadays a 23-15 loss to Wales is regarded as a moral victory by England. Maybe Gore Vidal had that in mind when he said it was insufficient for him to succeed; his friends had to fail as well.

Not only is Johnson’s team failing, his captain, Steve Borthwick, does not have the on-field presence, to put it mildly, that the team manager had in his referee-intimidating pomp.

England’s attack coach Brian Smith criticised referee, Jonathan Kaplan for his handling of the Wales game, but those criticisms were rejected yesterday by the IRB. When Johnson played he wouldn’t have waited until after the final whistle to make his case about Kaplan’s officiating; he’d have been in the ref’s ear from kick-off to the final whistle.

The repeated comparisons being drawn between Borthwick and Johnson, meanwhile, carry an unspoken judgement that this England side is not built in its manager’s image.

Talking of images: Declan Kidney doesn’t have a forehead you could use to break breeze blocks, nor does his name pop up on youtube with the words ‘punch’ and ‘elbow’ attached. But his calmness and pragmatism have proved a winning combination in the dressing-room — and with the public at large.

To expand the point, you could finesse the widespread suggestions that at a time of economic uncertainty people are getting behind the rugby team, which is raising the nation’s spirits.

It might be slightly more accurate to say that people are getting behind Declan Kidney’s style of leadership, which has an air of level-headed, unflappable competence which many of us wish were shared by the financial and business charlatans held up until quite recently as pillars of Irish society (short rant over? — ED.).

Still, don’t judge Martin Johnson too quickly. If our chat with him three years ago is anything to go by, he learns as he goes, and Mary McAleese needn’t pack wellington boots for tomorrow. Back then he was keen to set the record straight.

“Wait, I shook her hand last time,” said Johnson in 2006. “God … I tell you, my Dad had that game on the video the last time I called round to his house, and while I watched it I was saying, ‘What are we doing?’

“It was one of those things that became important at the time, not moving, but it lasted longer than I remember. At the time I thought it was over really quickly, but it goes on for over four minutes on the tape.

“I was hiding behind the couch, to be honest.”

I know how he felt. Before he answered the question I was taking shelter behind the furniture myself.