Woodward paints a winning self-portrait

On Rugby: The funny thing about Clive Woodward's recently published autobiographical account of England's journey to become World Cup champions is when you finally put it down, it hasn't been a particularly seismic experience. You aren't given any great titbits, any particularly insight into what is said in the dressing-room. The appropriately named Winning is not a revelatory, warts and all expose.

Researching an article on Woodward before the World Cup and obtaining information and anecdotes about Sir Clive from players who served under him, I learned more about him, especially in his two and a bit years at London Irish. Some of his players at the time gave the impression his reign was a good deal scattier - albeit in a highly charming and even inspirational way - than he leads us to believe in Winning.

Throughout the 420-page tome, Woodward clearly strives to ensure a certain amount of dressing-room privacy, and is at pains not to offend or criticise anyone involved in England's success story. At one point he goes out of his way to say so. Which is utterly fair enough.

The match accounts are often akin to mini reports; you'd have liked more anecdotal stuff, especially from his coaching days, which instead is a well-documented account of the highly detailed and precise plans which had to be put into place for England to conquer the world.

Coaching, or managing, elite international sports teams is nowadays as much a science as anything else, and the extent to which Woodward's planning was of almost military precision will not come as a surprise. Nor the seeming constant battle he had with committees and the amateur ethos in applying his methods, which is an underlying theme throughout his coaching career. But it's still eye-opening.

As interesting as his six years as England coach is his time cutting his teeth at Henley, and then London Irish. Alas, London Irish don't come out of this too well, even if Woodward clearly had genuine warmth for the club and many of the people associated with it. As an aside, Woodward reveals Rob Henderson spent one Christmas in the Woodward household, and one of his more cherished possessions is the green jersey in which Henderson won his first cap, and subsequently dropped into their house in a Tesco bag.

"I wrote Rob a note thanking him for his shirt and telling him that when he eventually grew up I would return it to him. I still have that green jersey at home today."

London Irish had just been relegated, there'd been an exodus of players and the start of the 1995-'96 season would be a critical period in the club's history. At the players' recommendation, Woodward signed Conor O'Shea ("a wonderful player and a charming man") and Gabriel Fulcher, which didn't go down well with "a furious" Donal Lenihan, according to Woodward.

"My move would come back to bite me many years later. Donal Lenihan was appointed manager of the 2001 Lions tour to Australia. (I still wonder why he was chosen over so many other great candidates for the job, seeing that he was an amateur official and the game had been professional for five years). It may be that old animosity had something to do with my not being considered to coach the Lions side."

Having won promotion in his second season, 1995-'96, Woodward attended the club a.g.m. and was horrified to discover that a proposal was put forward that only people of Irish descent could be involved in management of the club, with exceptions at the discretion of the committee.

Accused by one member of trying to turn London Irish "into an English club", he walked out and had to be persuaded to continue after the motion was abandoned without a vote. Even so, his growing business concerns compelled him to ask the club for a full-time assistant. "The stand-out candidate was Willie Anderson." But, before training one evening the following October, Woodward was met at the door of the changing-room by Duncan Leopold, a member of the committee.

"He blocked the door and held his hand up to my chest," writes Woodward, who was informed his services were no longer required as they were replacing him with Anderson. Woodward passed on his best wishes to the players, turned and left the ground. Tacky.

Andre Watson doesn't come out of it too well either. Woodward regularly notes with irony how many times the South African official officiates exciting cliffhanging finishes, right up to the World Cup.

The battles to have the RFU implement his strategies are also revealing. Famously, of course, the RFU director of rugby at the time asked why Woodward would even want an office at Twickenham when he was a coach; the subsequent backing of the RFU chief executive Francis Baron was crucial. If nothing else it should be essential reading for management committees around the world, including the IRFU.

Woodward takes you through the lows, the infamous Tour From Hell, the 1999 World Cup, and the successive Grand Slams failures against the Celtic countries, the lessons learned from all of those defeats, the admittance of several selection mistakes along the way and the extraordinary back-up systems he put in place and the occasional observation about opponents.

Of course, Woodward's book is ultimately a self-justification of his methods. In taking the reader through the World Cup final, and the zig-zag routine which led to Jonny Wilkinson's match-winning drop goal, Woodward highlights the role played by nearly every one of the backroom staff he had gradually and meticulously put in place over the previous six years.

And that's fair enough. After all, he and England did win the World Cup.

That gives him the conch.