Personally, I would rather stand buck-naked and try to tackle Jonah Lomu, and an angry Jonah at that, a Jonah toting a chestful of weaponry and carrying his baby from a burning building. But Lawrence has already done all that - apart from the naked stuff of course, and the gun/baby stuff, unless there's something we don't know - and so it's on to fresh challenging horrors; specifically, the Nike photo-shoot.

Five solid hours under the arc-lights, twisting and posing and sweating as a massive team of arty types fluffs and fusses and paints his 18 stones into position. There's an assistant to the director's assistant, and a make-up assistant's assistant, and someone whose sole job seems to be to change the mood-music on the boom-box, which must be a more fun way to work for Nike than some we're not allowed to mention, and Lawrence is certainly not going to mention. He's a good boy now. A very good boy indeed.

He is also quite spectacularly good-natured about it all. He cracks jokes with the fluffers, he offers to make coffee for all while fetching himself a cup of good strong 'builders' tea'; he even gets the poncing photographer types, who couldn't catch a rugby ball without breaking a nail, laughing away at the tale of Jason Leonard's first England cap, and the proud hour he spent the next day watching the white shirt go round in the washing machine.

Three or four more years, Lawrence Dallaglio says he's got in him. Three or four at the top, with rugby union at its most popular point in history and England facing some of the most exciting teams that have ever existed, and then on to something probably rugby related. 'Having been involved in this game all my life I think it will be very hard to sever the links once I finish playing. No, I don't know what yet, but I'm a firm believer in not getting too worried about what the future holds. And yes, you can put that down to past experience.'

Past experience. Others might still rail, or feel bitter, about the events of the last few years. The News of the World 'sting' in May 1999 that got a naive and champagne-fuelled Dallaglio to boast - emptily, he later insisted, to the RFU's satisfaction - of his cocaine use, and led to his loss of the England captaincy. Then, two years later, the cruciate injury that forced him to essentially take a year off rugby, at a thrilling time for the national side.

Everything is relative, however, and though he won't talk about it at length, these vicissitudes have always been set in perspective by another huge event in Dallaglio's life, the death in 1989, on the Marchioness, of his sister Francesca.

Today, he's in the business of moving on, every day. He won't allow himself to dwell on the NoW scuppering, nor even dislike the journalists who entrapped him. 'Now, it's something that was there. Hugely unfortunate. Not the kind of thing you'd wish on anyone. But it's a chapter that's closed, pretty much. I'm very positive in my life, always have been. My parents are very strong people, and have taught me that you've simply got to deal with what life throws at you, then move forward.

'Nor do I really see myself as being injured. Again, it's a thing of the past. Terribly disappointing at the time, of course. Basically I'd just got my foot caught in a difficult position, my studs got caught in the ground, and my knee rotated, further round than it should have done, and I tore my cruciate. It's an increasingly common injury in contact sports like football and rugby.

'The worst thing is that, these days, playing any professional sport, you train very, very hard. Players are fitter than they've ever been. After having put all of that work in, you can run out on a Saturday or a Sunday and see the fruits of your labour - when injured you actually train even harder, but without any of the fun bit at the end.'

Missing any match is bad enough, but Dallaglio was forced to pull out of last year's Lions tour to Australia, a career highlight for every player lucky enough to be selected. 'The Lions tour was something I was very excited about,' he says, 'very committed to, so in those terms it was a terribly unfortunate injury. But I've been very lucky with injury throughout my career. And I've been playing rugby for a long time, and you don't often get rest, so you try to be sensible about it and use it in a positive way.'

The power of positive thinking. It's all a little New Age for what was, until recently, the most unreconstructed sport in the world, but rugby has changed more in the last 15 years, says Dallaglio, than at any time in its history. There was, for instance, cryotherapy in Poland for the England squad, in which the players went into a freezer after training. There's also the 'mental game' that he says he fights before the real one. 'You walk round the pitch, winning the game in your head, and when it comes to the real thing - well, you've already won it once, just do it again.'

The transformation of English rugby spans almost the period that Dallaglio, now 30, has spent playing it, and has led, with a few nasty bumps along the way, to the prospect of one of the most intense and fascinating few years the game has known, with the World Cup next year likely, according to Dallaglio, to be the third biggest sporting event on the globe, after the Olympics and football's own World Cup.

'The sport has gone through a huge, huge transition in the last decade, and I think the authorities have coped with it reasonably well. Reasonably. The game was completely amateur in the late Eighties, then 15 years later it was completely professional; the pace of change has been phenomenal. There have been problems, normally revolving around money and power and the struggle for both, but as long as people have the game's interest at heart and not their own betterment then the game's in good shape. And after this year the Six Nations is back on terrestrial television, which is a huge benefit for everyone in the game.'

He has been, today, in the gym since 7.30 and then spent the morning training at the west London ground of Wasps, for whom he's back playing as captain. Last week he spent two days training with the England squad, from 8.30 am to 9pm each day. The levels of fitness and, to an extent, skill demanded today are equal to that of football. But was the game, today, as much fun?

'When you're searching for excellence - you've to embrace professionalism and all the advantages it brings, on the fitness side, the skill side, whatever, but, yes, it's also up to the players to make sure the fun is not lost. If you lose the fun, and it can happen, you can lose a little bit of the edge which makes you a very good player as well.

'The fun is knowing when to work hard and when to relax and not taking yourself too seriously. And probably just staying true to yourself and not listening to too much stuff other people say about what you should be and should do.

'Sport, and rugby in particular, is defined by your character. It's such a physical game, and such a beautifully skilful game as well, that when you go out on a rugby pitch your character, the make-up of who you are, is what you give to the game.

'I suppose that's what I love about it, the way in which it lays you open. When you go out there there's no hiding place. You've got to demonstrate what you yourself are all about; and you've got to look after each other, which is something I'm a great believer in - with all the roles to be played, it's the ultimate team game.

'Without wanting to overdramatise it, it's probably the nearest thing we get these days to a gladiatorial contest. It's the closest thing to going to war without actually firing bullets. Amongst all the rules and the ethics, underneath it's still a pretty serious, brutal contest.'

Most brutal of all, he thinks these days, is against South Africa - 'it's in the way they play; they simply come straight at you' - as fans will see soon. England are playing the big three southern hemisphere teams in short succession over the next few weeks. 'In football terms you're talking Brazil, France and Argentina,' says Dallaglio, growing animated with excitement, shedding the laconic poise for a second.

Could any of the home nations begin to catch up, I wondered, with these monsters? 'I don't think the phrase catch-up is something we think about. Our record in recent years has actually improved enormously against the southern hemisphere, particularly at home.

'Whatever sport you play, playing at home you've got to feel confident about your chances, got to back yourself. Whatever the result, though, there's still a great sense of anticipation, an aura around these fixtures which makes them a very special three weeks. Just New Zealand is exciting enough in itself; they haven't been across here for three years.

'That, of course, is taking it for read that we get selected, which none of us should really take for granted these days, as the competition's so hard.'

This is not just false modesty. Once an automatic selection, Dallaglio is now one of a handful of outstanding players vying for a place in England's back row, some of them a lot younger than him. For Dallaglio, the long term prize is to become an automatic selection again, in time for the World Cup in Australia next October, but to do that he will have to play outstandingly well - and he knows it.

'The World Cup is 12 months away,' he says, 'but in rugby terms it's a long, long way away. England have 14 Test games beforehand, for instance. One game is a long time in rugby, and players could come through who you'd never associated with the team. So it's a development process for the World Cup, but beating some of the best teams on the planet along the way would obviously be a huge confidence boost.'

Would he like to captain again? 'Captaincy is something I don't really think about. When I came into the England team I wasn't captain, I'm not captain at the moment, so I obviously enjoyed the chance when I had it. I was disappointed in the circumstances surrounding losing the captaincy, but, you know, the important thing for me is to get picked in the team. And if someone feels that I'm capable of going out and leading that team, then I'm more than happy to do that.'

Talking about the best teams on the planet, I wonder what he feels could be done to help the emerging nations, who can produce erratically thrilling rugby but never seem to make it past the minnow rounds.

'You're right, it is a difficulty for the game. There are a number of strong teams who are able to compete because the finances, the resources are just getting ever better and bigger - but I think it's important to share that with the countries who are in the process of coming good but don't have the resources. What you don't want is a tournament that becomes predictable. I think if you take away the unpredictability of sport you lose the essence of sport itself. The emerging nations are really skiing uphill in trying to catch up, people like Canada and to an extent Argentina, Samoa, Fiji.

'Ultimately it's about the distribution of wealth, isn't it? The IRB, the governing body, are trying to make sure that happens, which is right. If the other countries are not helped in any way we're going to be at a situation soon where there's only four or five teams on the planet capable of winning the World Cup.'

It would be unnatural, surely, for players today, providing such entertainment for more crowds than ever, not to feel vague resentment at the fact footballers still earn so much more, even with rugby's sexy new ability to join lucrative hands with the fashion and promotions industry and do things such as the Nike shoot - which he insists, incidentally, he likes doing - but Dallaglio shakes his head.

'I love football, like every Englishman, and when I was younger played football a lot, but then I fell in love with rugby. But money doesn't come into it. Honestly, it doesn't. I've never really thought of sport in those terms. Obviously if you weren't earning anything it would be a problem, but money has never been my god, my motivation in life. And if it all goes wrong, all falls apart, I'm not afraid to go out and earn, do something completely different.' It is hard to imagine quite what, though. His every fibre, as he sits jiggling his leg through our interview, is straining to be back on the pitch outside Wasps' window.

He has been an immensely courteous, likeable companion, if a little guarded, talking perhaps too much of the right talk about the players' responsibilities as role models, and moderation in all things, and suchlike, but perhaps that was only to be expected, given the 1999 journalistic treatment that almost ended this brilliant career; the NoW sting has I suspect made it all but impossible for any journalist to get Lawrence talking, really talking, over a couple of beers.

For the moment he's back, he's furiously fit, and he's happy in his own skin, and he's looking at the start of what may turn out to be his finest period in English rugby, and what will turn out to be his last. It would be a cruel and pointless piece of hackery for anyone to try to take him down at this stage. On the other hand, Scotland do need all the help they can get.