The world really doesn't need another writer who begins his articles with Oscar Wilde quotes. Even if the words are apposite, there is a little part of me that grunts 'uh' in dissatisfaction when I see his name in italics underneath. Yes, nothing screams of a pretentious journalist in a hurry like a gratuitous Oscar Wilde quote stuck onto the top of a page.
Which is why I've saved mine for the second paragraph. "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative" - Oscar Wilde. While Sir Clive Woodward might be caught stroking his chin and staring profoundly towards the middle distance if he read that, you imagine Brian Ashton would, according to his mood, frown or growl and then dismiss it with a contemptuous silence or an earthy quip.
Ashton is a distinctly unpretentious, unlike Woodward. Both though, are extremely imaginative people: Woodward in his management strategies and Ashton in his brand of rugby. Woodward is perceived in some parts of sport as being kinkier than a repressed sergeant major, while Ashton has made his reputation through advocating intelligent, thoughtful and spontaneous rugby. Those impressions may not be entirely right, but that they exist at all shows both men were regarded as visionaries in their profession.
Until, that is, the most important matches in both men's careers came around. For all the differences between the two World Cup campaigns run by them, one similarity is that both have been marked by the sacrificing of the imaginative aspects of the game for a return to basic, pragmatic consistency. Woodward did it over the year preceding the start of the 2003 campaign, Ashton has done it over the last month.
In Ashton's case, it has very much been as a last refuge. His team has gone through 20 changes of personnel over the course of the six matches since the opener against the USA, and he has managed to fit all 31 of his players into a match 22 at some point. Only two players have played in the starting XVs of every match (and a cookie goes to whoever names them first).
In 2003, Woodward made many changes, and used most of his players too - each switch was planned and deliberate. He fielded identical XVs in both the first and last matches of the Cup. He knew his best team months in advance, and he protected it.
Ashton has not been tinkering and tailoring so much as desperately casting about for his best team. Tom Rees, Shaun Perry, Jamie Noon, Olly Barkley, Joe Worsley, Lawrence Dallaglio - all of them started against the USA on September 7. He finally found it - and that he did at all is astonishing - just in time for the quarter-finals. Even then it was by near-accident, with Andy Farrell dropping out injured.
Ashton's best team may not even be taking the pitch now. He would surely have stuck with the XV from the quarter- and semi-finals had he been able to. Imagination is not what wins you World Cups; consistency is. In both performance and selection.
And it is that maxim that explains the selection of Mark Cueto, rather than Dan Hipkiss. England's midfield combination was one of the most troublesome areas for Ashton to fix. Matthew Tait and Mike Catt have come through England's two toughest matches intact, and though the combination is unlikely to still be in place come the Six Nations, it is the most secure partnership England have in that area.
Hipkiss may well have been able to better exploit Francois Steyn's defensive weaknesses, but the match-up of Tait and JP Pietersen would have been too great a compromise.
Cueto has been mediocre in the games he has played in this Cup, and being moved around from full-back to the wing (there's that unnecessary early imagination working) didn't help. However he is far less likely than Tait to miss a tackle, and given the counter-attacking ability of both South Africa's wings, that could be crucial come Saturday.
The squad is otherwise free of change, despite questions over whether, say, George Chuter would have been a better pick than Mark Regan. Ashton's pragmatism has come along pretty late, achieving in two matches what Woodward did in two years, but it might just have arrived in time to secure the same, glorious result.
