I had already missed twice. "This is your last chance. You've already lost us the World Cup today. Are you going to lose it for us again?" Dave Alred, England's kicking coach, was firing taunts at me. "You're not going to kick this, I can tell now. You're scared. I can see you shaking from here."

He was right, I was. The posts seemed like distant matchsticks although I was only 35 metres away. Alred's assistants flung rugby balls past my face and along the ground in the line of my run-in to the kicking tee, where the Gilbert looked as if it was trembling in the wind. The heckles hit me squarely in the ears.

On an isolated Surrey rugby field there were only four other people to distract me. Their screams and hollers undoubtedly succeeded but were a whisper compared with those willing Jonny Wilkinson, one way or another, when he sent the ball sailing through the uprights on the way to winning the World Cup for England at Telstra Stadium. Still, in my own situation the pressure felt as intense.

So, just as Wilkinson did, I went back to what Alred had taught: place the ball with the stitching towards the target; take as many steps back as comfortable and stand at around 45 degrees to the tee; take dead aim by fixing a target between the posts; flex your foot and visualise the feeling of connecting with the ball; then stare.

The first four steps seemed easy enough but the fifth was a worry. When Alred said "stare" he did not mean just at the ball, not even the bottom of the ball, but, more specifically, at a single stitch on the seam. It was not easy to see it from six strides back.

Alred told me later that the strain of trying to spot the stitch was one of the reasons why players like Wilkinson and the prolific point-scorer Rob Andrew leaned so far forward in their final stance before moving in to boot the ball.

After more than a few seconds of focus I finally found my stitch and stared. With the stitch the only thing in my sight and with Alred still shouting abuse, I moved in on the ball and slammed it.

I did not even have to look up. The sweet-sounding thud was enough. But by the time I did, the ball was floating at flag-level over the black dot.

"And there it is," Alred said simply, with a satisfied smile that must have been multiplied a million times in the World Cup final when England's No10 set them on course for the country's most famous rugby triumph.

Transition complete. In under two hours the man regarded as the world's leading kicking coach had taken a two-bit hacker who could hardly hit grass from five metres to this. Wilkinson is injured for the homecoming match against the Barbarians at Twickenham tomorrow; were it not for the fact that I'm Australian . . .

Having spent the morning with Alred I am convinced that every accolade addressed to Wilkinson should also be accepted in part by his 51-year-old coach, who has worked with the England squad since 1999. In the weeks leading up to a match the former Minnesota Vikings kicker spends up to two hours a day with the England fly-half, perfecting technique and, more importantly, teaching him how to handle pressure.

"At the highest level I'd say that kicking is about 40% technique and about 60% mental," said Alred. "Players at that level should have the technique down but being able to reproduce it under pressure is the key. It's also the hardest part.

"My job is to give the players the tools to cope with that pressure. It really is the difference between a good kicker and great kicker."

Alred, in essence, coached Wilkinson to kick the last-ditch drop-goal that sunk Australia. He prepared the 24-year-old for that moment when the pressure would be greater than any other - the last minute of extra-time in a World Cup final - and to be able to produce when it arrived. As the kick flew through, the sense of job satisfaction must have been irresistible.

"It was very pleasing for me," Alred said, surely an understatement. "Jonny has such a robust technique. He gets through the ball quickly and there's not much that can go wrong.

"That's why [the French kicker Frédéric] Michalak started to miss when the pressure came on in the semi-final - because his technique isn't as tight.

"The fact that Jonny was able to block out all the external factors, everything in that stadium, and kick the goal says a lot about him. He is very mentally strong."

My achievement suddenly seemed extremely small but Alred lifted my spirits. "There could be 40,000 people in a stadium or there could be four like there was with you. It doesn't mean that the pressure will be any less," he said. "It's how the external influences interfere with your ability to reproduce perfectly the technique that is important. You learn the process of how to deal with the pressure and then apply it in the same way."

I had done drills to ensure correct technique. My foot followed a curved shape as it swept in to meet the ball at the start of the day. But Alred instructed me to run straight and kick it mid-stride to train my foot to continue in a straight line after contact, finishing directly in front of the tee.

To get the best strike I also had to have a "hard" foot and hit the Gilbert with the ball of my big toe. Flexing my foot and pushing it against the ground after stepping back is an important rehearsal, an imitation of what contact will feel like.

There were other exercises as well but, in the end, it all came back to that stitch. It was hard to believe that such a tiny piece of thread could be considered so crucial to the win which drove 750,000 England supporters into London's streets. But it was.

"The stitch is important for two reasons," Alred said.

"First, it's for technique. If you hit that stitch and hit it hard, then it should be the ideal strike. But it's also a way of dealing with the pressure. You saw, even when you kicked, how hard it is to find that stitch. If you're concentrating so hard on trying to find it, then you naturally block out everything else that's going on around you. If you're focused solely on that stitch, then nothing else should distract you."

It was that easy. Alred is completing a PhD in performing under pressure and the answers, after he finds them, will be adaptable not only to sport but business and all areas of life.

At the moment, though, when it comes to kicking, it is as simple as that stitch.