'Jonny Wilkinson will be talked about in a hundred years' time," Phil Larder said on Saturday evening, revelling in yet another phenomenal performance from England's outside-half. Eight kicks out of eight was the statistic that held the attention as England came back to beat Australia, but perhaps just as significant to Larder and his fellow coaches was the fact that in another area of the game Wilkinson's life was being made easier.
Against the All Blacks a week earlier, James Simpson-Daniel had marked his debut by popping up in Wilkinson's position to give Lewis Moody a scoring pass just before the interval. Until that moment the game had been passing him by. On Saturday, in the process of creating two tries for Ben Cohen against the Wallabies, the Gloucester wing showed that the lesson had not been wasted.
Like Jason Robinson, Simpson-Daniel is not the physically imposing type. At barely 6ft and 12st, he looks unexceptional. But to quick feet and speed across the ground he adds an intelligence and an imagination that take him into unexpected areas. For the first of Cohen's tries, after 10 minutes, the 20-year-old left his post on the right wing and crossed to the opposite flank. Drawing three defenders, he turned in the tackle and fed Cohen, whose slanting run took him through the hole Simpson-Daniel had created.
With just over 20 minutes of the match left, and England rampant, he accepted Matt Dawson's pass and showed the ball to the defenders before slipping it to Cohen, who again chose the most damaging angle of penetration. In those crucial moments Clive Woodward's England seemed to have acquired another dimension.
"In my first game I didn't touch the ball that often, which isn't anyone's fault but my own," Simpson-Daniel said. "It took me 35 minutes to get my hands on it. I went looking for the ball more today. The big thing for me this week was communication, which comes with confidence."
What Woodward wants, his newest recruit said, was for the important calls to be made by whichever back arrives in the fly-half's position. "Clive wants the first back to get their hands on the ball so that Jonny doesn't always have to work as first receiver. He wants all our backs to be able to do that job and call things off the cuff. We don't want it to be the scrum-half's decision to go left or right. We want the guy who wants the ball screaming to him. If you scream loud enough, he's got to give it to you."
Last week Simpson-Daniel got himself into the right positions but failed to make his voice heard. He had been nervous on his arrival among the squad's big names - "These guys are legends, people I've been watching all the way through school" - but had settled down during his second week.
"I was still nervous, but less so. The usual people I speak to before match day - my girlfriend, my mum, my dad - they all said I sounded different from last week. In a way, that made me worry. I don't want to sound like I'm not nervous. Anyway, the nerves hit me overnight. I didn't get a great night's sleep."
Robinson, who also began his England career on the wing, remarked on the progess the newcomer had made during his short time with England. "The more training sessions we do," Simpson-Daniel said, "the louder and more comfortable I get with the players around me. If one of them is in my way, even if it's Johnno, then I've got to scream at him to move. They've all been brilliant with me. They're trying to get me going, encouraging me to get involved."
And with England's back division still "not really firing", in Woodward's phrase, there is a theory that Simpson-Daniel is destined to be closer to the centre of the action. Dan Luger's return from injury in the new year might prompt a move to the centre for the younger man, where he could provide the element of unpredictability currently lacking in the partnership of Will Greenwood and Mike Tindall.
Beating Tri-Nations sides in November is satisfying enough for Woodward and his coaching staff, but by the time the World Cup comes around they may be viewing the launch of James Simpson-Daniel as the big gain of this autumn series.
