During tournament rugby like this, the golden parts of the weeks for me are the nights after a game and the next day. We have to have won for it to be enjoyable - there’s no shred of pleasure to be had otherwise. I enjoy the transition, when you can’t really switch off your mind from the game that has just gone and you can’t stop it wandering into the week to come. But, officially, you are, nevertheless, resting in a beautiful kind of limbo, with the pressure briefly off, stuck - as we were on Saturday – halfway between Tonga and Australia.

That brief lull on Saturday was spent at EuroDisney, which the boys – wives and kids on board – all really enjoyed, and the irrepressible Lewis Moody so enjoying himself that we weren’t sure if the rest he took was because of sheer exhaustion or a recurrence of the headache sustained in action against Tonga the night before.

The most memorable moment, though, was when we had a large number of the England team, plus assorted family members, all sitting on a rollercoaster that got stuck halfway up a climb. I was convinced this was just an element of a typical fairground ride designed to scare us, although, after about 15 minutes of sitting there, I had to concede that maybe there was a more deep-seated problem after all.

On getting back to the ground, we were amused to learn that this was actually our fault and that we had loaded up too slowly. Suffice to say, we intend that to be the last technical hitch in our side at this World Cup.

By the time yesterday afternoon rolled around, we were back into full work mode: time to assess and to plan ahead.

As far as planning ahead goes, it will no doubt be pointed out in an active week in the media that Saturday will be the first time I have played Australia since the World Cup final four years ago. I can honestly say that is something I haven’t, and won’t, be thinking about. That was a different age, a different era in my rugby life and I hardly feel that the two connect.

I feel the same about my form. I know people like to compare me then and now, but, again, you are comparing different eras of rugby and the comparison doesn’t work. When I was in my first two years of injury after 2003, I always used to say that the motivation behind all the hard work I was putting in during rehab and training was to make me come back a better player. That is still the ethos, but, when you are out on the field, it is a bit of a reality check and you cannot compare over a four-year span.

Rugby World Cups merely emphasise the changing of eras of the game. If anyone tried to play 2003 rugby this time around, they would simply get outgunned. That would work on an individual basis for me, too.

All I can do is match my 2003 effort levels; that is the only comparison that is valid because I’d like to have come back dazzling and displaying every piece of individual skill I have within me. Likewise, I’d always like to play on sunny days with a dry ball. But that doesn’t happen. Rugby is not about individuals being exhibitionists.

England have been playing the way we have been because we have wanted to be ruthless. The best teams are those who have a game plan and are able to impose it. That is what we were trying to do against Samoa and Tonga. We couldn’t afford to get the game wrong, so ruthlessness was the first essential.

A different type of game might have been possible; we might have been able to put it wider more often earlier and not kicked so much, but our priority was control – we needed to ensure that we didn’t lose it and that we were always moving forward. It was similar against Italy in the Six Nations. That may not have been a particularly expansive game either, but we pinpointed a way to win and set about executing that.

That is what it is all about now: the execution of ruthlessness. Our survival depends on it.