First things first: I have been dropped before. I know how it feels, I know what this is all about. I was dropped for a World Cup quarter-final in 1999; I went on the 1998 Tour of Hell and I wasn’t in the next England squad. And when I was in and out of the long spate of injuries, there were periods when I was coming back to fitness and my name wasn’t on the squad sheet. So I understand what has happened.

Obviously, on the surface, I am disappointed because I care about things and because you always feel you can make a contribution. But you cannot think: what about me? You cannot wallow.

I heard that Mike Catt was on the radio yesterday talking about the number of times that he had been dropped from the England team in his career. Catty is a man I massively respect, for the fortitude with which he handled all those setbacks and the way in which he came back time after time.

Like him, you won’t catch me dropping to my knees and pondering some personal disaster. Instead, like him, I’ll take this as a lesson I can learn from, another signpost on the journey of understanding how to get the best out of yourself.

But what is significant for me on this is not so much how to get the best out of myself as a rugby player, but how to enjoy the experience of my rugby career to the full. I know that this might seem like an indication that the way I have been playing should change, as if it is some sort of lesson in how to improve my performance.

My answer to that, though, is: I didn’t need that. I don’t need a disappointing experience to make me analyse my performance. I have spent the past ten years of my life perpetually asking: what do I need to do to get better? That has been the process week in, week out for as long as I can remember.

What I do acknowledge is that that there have been occasions or periods of games recently when I haven’t played the way I would have wanted, when I haven’t been the player I’d like to be.

I find that frustrating, too. I find it frustrating that I have become known as this points scorer, this successful kicker when that is not necessarily the part of the game I enjoy. But there have been times in this Six Nations when there haven’t been the kind of options on that I would like to have taken, when the chance to play exciting rugby hasn’t been there. When you are presented with such a smaller number of options, you simply have to become the type of player that they demand.

Hopefully, if I get the opportunity to play for England again, those options might be better. But for now, I just know that this is the way the game is, this is how it works. I’ve been with enough people like Catty, I’ve seen them handle it and I’ll handle it, too. Yesterday, I did have to make a few phone calls, to family and friends, just to warn people like my Dad that there was this piece of news coming and I wanted them to hear it from me rather than anyone else.

I spoke to my brother for a while and pretty soon the subject of me and England faded from the conversation. There are more important things going in in the world. Two coaches at Newcastle Falcons lost their jobs yesterday. That is a massive thing to lose a job. Next to that, not being selected to start a rugby game at the weekend hardly figures.