Accident of birth or product of the system? England, it is alleged, already have a golden generation waiting to roll the chariot forward once more, but they have only to look back two years, to football’s so-called lustrous tribe, to see how debased the currency can become.

Do not blame the players. The desire for an easy headline can impose an expectation many find hard to justify. How foolish it is to award the medals before the achievement has taken place. All that can be said of English rugby with any certainty is that, by 2011 and the next World Cup, there should be a queue of talented players eager for a trip to New Zealand and hardened by exposure to the international arena.

But at the heart of any world-class team must be a group whose place in any eclectic XV is unchallenged, such as that contained by the Wales team of the 1970s. Just roll the names off the tongue (or study the videos, as Shaun Edwards has been doing in his new role as defence coach to the Wales squad): Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Mervyn Davies, Gerald Davies.

All four were born between January 1945 and July 1947 and were destined to strike sparks off each other. All would feature in a best-ever Wales XV, many would place them in a world XV certainly of their generation, arguably of any generation. Nor have we even considered the slightly younger men who followed within a couple of years — Phil Bennett, J. P. R. Williams, Graham Price — or the somewhat older men (inevitably forwards) who paved their way: Dai Morris, Delme Thomas, John Dawes.

How many picked these as a “golden generation” as they traipsed back from New Zealand in 1969, having lost 19-0 and 33-12 to the All Blacks? Yet that tour was the catalyst for what followed in the decade of the Dragon and the key individuals were blessed not only with natural talent far beyond most players but by association with visionary coaches (think Bill Samuel or Carwyn James) and a highly competitive club structure.

We can move closer to home and consider the England squad that reached the 1991 World Cup final and collected back-to-back grand slams. Three of the finest players to wear white were born in the same year, 1963: Rob Andrew, Rory Underwood and Dean Richards. During the preceding two years, Richard Hill and Brian Moore first saw the light of day and, within two more years, Will Carling and Jeremy Guscott were born.

All these players were vital components of the sides who, under the mature guidance of Geoff Cooke, sloughed off years of underachievement. Without the steps they took, in the twilight years of amateurism, the World Cup-winners, coached by Clive Woodward and captained by Martin Johnson, might not have ascended to the top of the global order in 2003 and here again comes a core of players born within nine months of each other. Lawrence Dallaglio, Matt Dawson, Will Greenwood and a second Richard Hill form that natural association, with Johnson and Neil Back a couple of years older.

The remarkable coincidence about that squad is that it contained another younger grouping — Jonny Wilkinson, Mike Tindall, Ben Cohen and Iain Balshaw — all born within seven months of each other.

This is a game that can be played ad infinitum, but it remains a fact that quality rubs off, that good players generally become better players by association and that individuals thrown together by a trick of birth can work their way through age-graded rugby together before emerging at the highest level, confident in their self-belief and the trust they have already established with many of their peers.

The system has much to do with this. England sent an under-21 side to Australia in 1993 with Dallaglio and Hill in its back row; the 1997 England Schools side in the same country contained Wilkinson and Tindall, among others, but the system now is not what it was then. This is a world of national and regional academies, when the identification of playing ability takes place far earlier and youngsters are accustomed to conditioning programmes and dietary concerns.

But still the accident of birth can be striking. Take 1986, which brought us Jordan Crane, Nick Abendanon, Anthony Allen, Shane Geraghty and Ryan Lamb, all named in the England Saxons squad and three of whom — Abendanon, Allen and Geraghty — have already won senior caps. The year before gives us James Haskell and Tom Croft, both in the senior squad; the year after, Danny Cipriani and Danny Care.

This is a significant cluster of playing talent, not all of whom will go on to have long international careers. Three of them, Cipriani, Geraghty and Lamb, play in the same position of fly half, though Cipriani and Geraghty have shown the ability to play elsewhere in the back division. This alone means they will have to maintain a consistently high standard. Competition for the shirt will be a fact of their rugby lives, just as it was for Dawson and Kyran Bracken at scrum half during the 1990s and into a new millennium — and they both passed a half-century of caps.

But England’s young men should not be overburdened. For a start, they have to earn their spurs by proving they are better — consistently better — than the holders of the jersey. For Cipriani and his peers to have Wilkinson ahead of them (indeed, alongside them in training) is a gift from which they must take as much pleasure as possible, in understanding how to run a game and the compelling standards required not only to reach the top but also to stay there. Golden generation? Maybe, but give them time to reach the gold standard.