Well, one good thing comes out of it, anyway. At least we can make up our minds about Brian Ashton. The England sides that the head coach puts out are either (a) brilliant, or (b) crap. Up until yesterday, I had kept in mind the possibility that (a) might represent a goal towards which England were fitfully moving. But such a position is no longer sustainable. Not only because we are getting rather more of (b) than we can conveniently deal with, and not only because the inconsistency itself is enough to damn any manager of a professional sporting team.

No, it is because Ashton has taken the Steve McClaren Option.

Any top coach who takes the McClaren Option should be fired immediately. It is a confession of incompetence. It is an admission that you don't know what you're doing. It is an acknowledgement that you are courting popular opinion rather than seeking to build an effective sporting unit.

Ashton's response to the humiliation of defeat by Scotland last weekend has been to drop Jonny Wilkinson. What a brave man! What a strong man, dropping Jonny! Everyone must surely admire Ashton for decisiveness. Not me. I remember McClaren too well.

McClaren opened his brief and calamitous term as the England football head coach by dropping David Beckham. This was supposed to tell us that McClaren was his own man, launching his own era. But it was a decision that had its roots not in sporting logic, but in narcissism. It ended with McClaren cowering beneath a brolly while England lost and the heavens wept. It is beneath that brolly that Ashton finds himself now.

Let's look at things more closely. We know that Wilkinson won the World Cup in 2003, but we also know that he didn't have his best game on Saturday. To be technical, he stank the place out. When my colleague, David Hands, gives you only three in his player ratings, you know you are in trouble.

But Wilkinson was not the only player to be more (b) than (a). He wasn't responsible for the shambolic indiscipline of the forwards, for a start. This was an entire team at fault, not an individual. But Ashton has dropped only Wilkinson. What do you think he wants us to understand from that? He is telling us that it was Wilkinson's fault that England lost.

And a little more. He is also telling us, and with desperate urgency, that it was not his fault. This singling out of Wilkinson is not a move based on sporting logic. It is based on the self-interest of the head coach. It was not a move made in pursuit of victory next weekend, it was an opportunity to look after No1.

Talk of unrest in the England camp is becoming more widespread and more damning. England have seldom looked like a team happy to play together in this RBS Six Nations Championship campaign. The inconsistency has been not a cause, but a symptom of the unhappiness that lies within.

Ashton has criticised players bluntly, in a manner that goes against modern conventions in sport, and this itself is resented. He oscillated from heavy-handed discipline - his dropping of Danny Cipriani for a minor indiscretion, his dropping of Wilkinson - to this out-of-the-blue promotion of Cipriani to the key position in a game that England must win.

Blame Jonny? But the coach is always the man to blame. That's what it means to be a boss. You bag the credit and the knighthood when you win, you take the blame when you lose. And if you deflect that blame on to players, you demonstrate not the fallibility of performers but the weakness of coaches.

Coaches who drop a big-name player in order to make a statement think that the declaration is about their own strength of character. But it is always the precise opposite. By setting up Wilkinson as the man to blame, Ashton is pointing out with pedantic clarity that he is the author of his own misfortunes.

Sure, there are logical reasons for demoting Wilkinson, and Cipriani is a more than promising player. But the manner of this - the deliberate setting-up of Wilkinson as scapegoat - well, it stinks the place out.

It's not a hard thing to see, though, because we have such recent experience with McClaren. We know that every manager who cares what people think about him is doomed. Duncan Fletcher, when England cricket head coach, failed to drop Andrew Flintoff after he turned up to practice drunk because he was worried what people would say. This led with terrible inevitability to the affair of the Fredalo.

McClaren dropped Beckham so that people would see him as a strong man; he ended up with a bewildered and divided team being gleefully dismantled before him. It is a pattern repeated again and again: if you try to manage a sports team - or anything else, for that matter - on the basis of what sort of figure you will cut, you will fail. And end up brollied.

Ashton has comprehensively brollied himself and now we can see him for what he is. Win, lose or draw on Saturday, we all know that this Six Nations campaign has been a disgrace. When players fail to perform to their potential on a consistent basis, it can only ever be a failure of management.

We have to blame Ashton for this calamity of a campaign. He would prefer us to blame one of the greatest players ever to pull an England shirt over his head - but I don't think we need to buy that one, do we?

Changing of the guard

Danny Cipriani

— Has two caps (as a replacement) for England.

— Has made 44 career appearances for London Wasps, 12 as a replacement.

— Has scored 246 points from 12 tries, 39 conversions and 36 penalty goals; 202 of those (7 tries, 36 conversions and 35 penalty goals) have come this season, mostly at fly half after his breakthrough season at full back last term.

— Has never converted a dropped goal in senior rugby.

— This season he has taken over his club's kicking duties and in the Guinness Premiership has a better success percentage, 71.7, than Jonny Wilkinson, with 38 successes from 53 place-kicks.

— Is also Wasps' leading tryscorer in the Premiership, with four tries.

Jonny Wilkinson

— Became the highest points scorer in international rugby union on Saturday, with 1,099 points (1,032 for England and 67 for the Lions) in 69 internationals.

— Has landed 16 of 22 place-kicks (72.7 per cent) and two of three dropped-goal attempts in four RBS Six Nations Championship games this season.

— Landed 19 of 30 place-kicks (63.3 per cent) at the World Cup and five of 11 dropped goals (45.5 per cent).

— Has played 164 matches for Newcastle Falcons, 14 as a replacement, scoring 1,849 points, (26 tries, 240 conversions, 23 dropped goals, 390 penalty goals).

— This season in the Premiership has kicked 17 from 25 place-kicks (68 per cent).

Words by Matthew Pryor