It may be unfair to quote Martin Johnson from his autobiography, but here we go anyway. In discussing his future, he tells us that he is “quite drawn to coaching”, but in studying the lives of coaches of international teams, he writes: “I am not sure I would want to get involved at that sort of level, though. I think I’d be quite happy helping out with a bunch of lads at a junior club. There’s much more to rugby than the top end, after all.”

Clearly England’s World Cup-winning captain has had second thoughts. It would also appear that he has had a rethink on the opinion that he so often proffered postretirement that to promote him to work with the national team would be an absurd appointment because his coaching experience is zilch.

And yes, of course we understand the difference between team manager, which he is, and coach, which he is not, but, semantics aside, he is head of the whole operation and that is what counts. His experience and successes in this field are negligible, far and away inferior to Andy Robinson and Brian Ashton, whose CVs were overloaded with qualifications that recommended them for the job.

The appointment of Johnson is an educated punt. He has never been a team manager, so a punt is being taken that his renowned qualities make him a good one. Most of us would surely opt for the man who is a serial achiever - as were Robinson and Ashton - ahead of the CV that reads: played 0, won 0.

Indeed, Johnson would have preferred to have done his time first with a bunch of lads at a junior club. Never in the past has a player been elevated to national manager/coach in this way; indeed, it is rare even to make the overnight jump from playing to managing/coaching a club.

François Pienaar, another World Cup-winning captain, did it at Saracens and the experiment failed. Rob Andrew did it when he moved to New-castle Falcons and his success was limited. Philippe Saint-Andre did it at Gloucester, where he earned a reputation for being a maverick. By the time Saint-Andre had been round the block a few times and arrived more experienced as the main man at Sale Sharks, his performance was infinitely better.

What the above have proved is the football cliché that the great players do not necessarily convert their skills when they make that change of role.

The most recent England football team to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup included Bryan Robson (briefly), Terry Butcher and David Platt. Not one of those has made it in management.

Johnson will have to do his learning on the job. If he wanted a role model, he should therefore look not to Sir Clive Woodward, who had Henley, London Irish and Bath on his coaching CV before he went near England, but to Ric Charlesworth, an Australian who was a doctor and a politician before he embarked on one of the most hailed coaching careers.

Charlesworth had been an international hockey player, but his only coaching experience before taking over Australia Hockeyroos in 1993 was with Perth Westside Wolves under-15 girls team. The Hockeyroos would become Olympic champions in 1996 and 2000 and Charlesworth then moved to become high-performance manager for New Zealand Cricket before recently taking over the India hockey team.

“There is no way to really assess one’s readiness for a job,” is what Charlesworth wrote in his autobiography. Given the failure of the appointments of Robinson and Ashton, his point appears to have been made.

Where Charlesworth excelled was not in coaching technique but in the culture and environment he set, where players were inspired to reach for their full potential. One would hope that will apply to Johnson. Creating that successful environment was where Ashton so glaringly fell short.

Indeed, given that England came second in the World Cup and the RBS Six Nations Championship when they were without that, improving by a single place seems eminently attainable. Add to that the tidal wave of young talent breaking on England’s shores and Johnson’s decision to come in cold to the pinnacle of the England set-up has a clear logic.

But it is a punt. Just as Australia punted on Charlesworth - and won.