I surrendered all faint hopes of an England win in Auckland during the captain’s press conference on Thursday afternoon. "Could England win the series?" seemed a fair question to put to England’s latest captain, Steve Borthwick. It was one that Rob Andrew had evaded Tuesday – to such an extent that a substantial minority of the media saw a conspiracy theory to play down expectations of any English success against a New Zealand team, who whether England want to admit it or not, were shorn of several core parts of their side, including 60 per cent of their front five.

Andrew talked about `performances’, which is fine if you are Italy away to the Springboks but not if you are a relatively powerful English pack against a nervous New Zealand team with a nation at its back rather than behind them. The message had to be confident - and not just within the confines of the changing room. England, to win yesterday, needed to make a few bold noises to boost their own self-esteem and keep their opponents doubting, niggled, if only ever so slightly.

As it was, Borthwick reiterated the Andrew line: “there is a lot of talk about results but we need to put out our best performance possible, do that and we have a chance of getting the result. We aim to put on our best possible performance. We will analyse that and get better again.” So no, he was not prepared to say that, yes, England could win. There was a whiff of the New Labour on-message nonsense about proceedings. That whiff had grown into a full-scale stink by the time of his last question of the session, that old sports hack's favourite: "How will you feel if you win on Saturday?"

As the captain and his manager had both repeatedly referred to New Zealand away as "the ultimate test" on more than the one occasion (thereby boosting, inadvertently or not, the magnitude of the challenge) I half-expected at the very least another sporting cliché: "It would be every English rugby player’s dream" - but no.

The captain was struggling, “It is hard to put into words. You want to pit yourself against the best and this is what we aim for; I can’t put it into words.” Then he tried again. “I’ll concentrate on the processes that get us to the outcomes. If we focus on the outcomes we won’t get there.”

Here we was exposed not so much as the brave new captain in the mould of mighty Martin Johnson, but instead a refugee from the final corporate-speak days of Andy Robinson when tactical inertia hid behind the meaningless twaddle that fills the corporate-help shelves of a bookshop near you.

England didn’t have a game plan to win the match but a series of "processes" to get them to the "outcomes". This contorted language evolved during the Clive Woodward era when he used the corporate claptrap in which he had successfully immersed himself to make England believe they were doing something and thinking in ways no other team was. True or not, it helped England to at least believe in their edge and that, as Woodward knew, was more than half the battle. Since then, this gobbledegook has become some sort of whacked-out wisdom in its own right.

New caps must wonder whether they have entered the world of political thinktanks when they enter the labyrinthine world of England’s test team. Streams of words were uttered, but never once a public statement of deep belief made on the behalf of the team; as if the press conferences were more about downplaying hopes rather than building confidence. Maybe the conspiracy theorists have a point.

How else is it possible to comprehend Andrew’s less than ringing endorsements for Mike Brown? “Efficient and consistent” was the praise meted out to the Harlequins full-back. I neither know whether these words were printed in the United Kingdom, nor whether the young full back searched them on the net in a quiet moment but I do know that had he seen or heard them, little would have been done to bolster his confidence, which was already perhaps lower than it should have been after a sluggish display against the Barbarians.

The manager’s words are actually near the mark but that is beside the point. He should be using these conferences to build the self-belief of his individuals. Test match management is not a matter of making sure the manager always comes across as right but of doing whatever is required to give the team the best possible edge, psychological as well as physical, of winning.

There is no question of anything amateurish about the preparation. England will have the latest videos of the latest All Blacks and probably a spy in place at the New Zealand training sessions, which are such relaxed affairs compared to the Cold War paranoia of an England session. But knowledge itself is not the answer in itself. Indeed the All Blacks are the polarised opposite to England. Andrew Hore was asked whether he knew much about Lee Mears, his opposite number at hooker; “Nah, I have not seen a great deal, I am not into analysis of the opposition.” Even Richie McCaw admitted to have not seen the performance of England back-rowers, James Haskell and Tom Rees in the recent Premiership final.

Most of the All Black analysis was centred on the Six Nations, which has been rendered partly irrelevant by the wholesale changes in personnel. But that is how the Kiwis do things. They work on the basics and say it as it is. England, altogether more modern and sophisticated have moved on from rugby as sport to rugby as business. Somewhere along the way they have lost the use of language and with it, the ability to think. Less talk of core values and more blood and guts for next week please.