Attack. What is it, exactly? How does it begin? “You look up and take a scan and you see what’s in front of you, so you have a picture in your mind. You know who is outside you and how the opposing defence has lined up. You make the call and then you know how flat to stand, what space to give yourself. You make one last scan just as the ball is about to come out.”

Then you are off and running (or kicking), making one more attempt to outwit rugby union’s defensive monster. Charlie Hodgson played beautifully in Sale’s thumping win over Gloucester on Friday night, taking them to the top of the Premiership with a record of four matches without conceding a try. For me, he is the finest fly-half controller, or playmaker, anywhere in Europe.

Watching rugby end-on makes it difficult to assess many of the game’s phases but, if you sit high up in the raucous stand behind the posts at Sale’s Edgeley Park, you can appreciate the master’s marvel-lous flatlying subtleties, the accuracy of his diagonal chips towards his big wings, the slipping into space of colleagues with short passes, the unerring drop kicks (he produced yet another at the death against Saracens recently) and the needle-sharp selection of plays from a barrage of options.

“At any point on the field, I suppose we have up to 10 or 11 plays we can use, although Philippe [Saint-André, the director of rugby] will sometimes have spotted something in the videos of the opposition, so we may have a special play for that week only. But it is also important to play what is in front of you.” Indeed, Hodgson’s ability to tear up the game plan and suddenly play off the cuff is the key to his bril-liance.

The team in possession has to have a relentless urgency. “With the new law taking the offside lines back at the scrum, there is maybe a little more chance to attack from the first phase, where it is just backs against backs,” he says. “But the main thing is to keep the ball and retain it through the phases, and play at a high tempo so that the other team can’t live with it. If you keep it at a fast pace, there must eventually be holes in the defence for players like Luke McAlister, Mathew Tait and Mark Cueto to get through.”

Yet the challenges are always there. “The demands are always increasing. The speed, physicality, the skill levels and the defence are all moving on rapidly. You also get a lot of people coming down your channel – big backs, big back-rowers. At fly-half you are more in the firing line now than ever. Sometimes you are feeling a bit more frantic than you look.”

So high praise for his inherent calmness, gutsy refusal to sit back in the pocket and for the attacking springboard he provides.

That’s attack for you. There is, of course, another side to the sport. His defence has often been questioned. Hodgson is not a big man or a particularly heavy defender. Ostensibly, this has been the reason his England career has been fitful. When we spoke at Sale’s training headquarters during the week, with the sun out at leafy Carrington, next to Man-chester City’s base, I detected a degree of inner bruising.

He has won 30 caps since his first in 2001, scored more than 250 points for England and once had a run of 18 Test starts in succession, but he has never been allowed to feel comfortable. The summer just gone, having fought back from a second serious knee injury, he toured with England in New Zealand. He played in the first Test in Auckland, then was ejected not only from the second but also from England’s elite squad, after he missed a tackle on Ma’a Nonu, the All Black centre, in a move that led to a key New Zealand try.

However, there is far more to this England switchback than meets the eye, even if you accept that Hodgson, at less than 14st, should have levelled the barrelling, 16st 5lb Nonu. (“It was definitely my miss,” admits Hodgson.) Defensive coaches always harp on that defending is in large part a unit affair and that on the defensive line you are always reliant on your mate inside and your mate outside. Yet against Nonu, Hodgson was isolated man on man. If tackling technique was his fault, then the sorry defensive shape of that sorry England team was not.

In my view, even though Hodgson is uncomplaining, he has been hung out to dry; not just by that feeble England management team in New Zealand – for whom no shame on or off the field was deep enough for them to take any responsibility for it – but by previous managements too.

The fly-half is part of a unit, or a partnership, with the scrum-half and inside-centre, a mid-field team within a team. Hodgson’s unit has been ever-chang-ing, ever-speculative, it has never been settled or complementary. He has been singled out.

He is cautious. “If you are saying I’ve been singled out, then those are your words, not mine,” he says. “But I always envy the England World Cup team in 2003. They’d been allowed to play together for years. Most times I have played with different players around me and it was hard to build good relationships. It would have been good to be able to make it like a club side.”

You sense he is hurt. He still loves coming to work at Sale, says he could be happy there for the rest of his career if they are winning trophies. (“It is a special club with special players.”) But does he still love the whole spectrum of the sport? “Probably not as much as I did. When you are younger, you don’t realise the pressure, or what will be at stake. I suppose my England career has been very up and down - that is the way it was meant to be for me.”

It is time for a radical reassessment. After a stilted start, Sale broke out on Friday as an attacking force, guided by Hodgson, and scored tries through Sébastien Chabal and David Doherty. And why fret that he cannot crunch his opposite numbers? Typically, Sale have the answer. McAlister, the richly talented All Black centre for whom Hodgson has a vast admiration and who has been doing much of Sale’s goal-kicking this season, defends in the fly-half channel, the rest of the backs step inwards one position and Hodgson defends at full-back. Where is the problem?

That all happens when the opposition have the ball. When Sale have the ball, it is time for the scan, the call, the plays, the ringmaster’s coat and tails. In a nation where players of natural tactical nous and an innate grasp of attacking possibilities are rare, to banish the one true maestro is preposterous.

HIGHS AND LOWS
Nov 2001:Charlie Hodgson scores a record 44 points on his England debut against Romania
Feb 2003:Starts at centre alongside Jonny Wilkinson but England’s experiment is flawed
Mar 2003:Ruptures cruciate ligament in left knee against Italy and misses 2003 World Cup
Nov 2004:Scores 27 points as England beat South Africa 32-16, then misses two easy penalties as Australia win 21-19 Summer 2005:Goes to New Zealand with Lions but doesn’t play in Tests
Mar 2006:Dropped after heavy defeat by France, ending a run of 18 starts
May 2006:Helps Sale to first Premiership title and is their Player of the Year
Nov 2006:Replaced after 52 mins as England lose to Argentina. Ruptures cruciate ligament in right knee v South Africa and misses 2007 World Cup
Jun 2008:Hauled off in the first Test against New Zealand after missing a key tackle, then dropped
July 2008:Omitted from senior England squad