Whether Martin Johnson's perma-scowl will ever thaw is hard to know, but for the foreseeable future we should resign ourselves to a look that would give a polar bear the shivers. Certainly this embarrassing performance against the world champions made his mood as wintry as the weather.
Not only that, it raised questions about the manager himself, whether, after all, it was such a good idea to put a man in charge of the national team who has no previous experience of such a task, even at club level, and whose main role since his outstanding playing career ended in 2005 has been as a corporate schmoozer. At times the England performance was little short of clueless, for which Johnson has to take much of the rap.
He refused to criticise how the team played, presumably mindful that their confidence needs nursing before Saturday's match against New Zealand, but his undertaker's expression told us what he really felt. "It was a brutal lesson for all of us to learn," he said. "We can either pack it all in or come back stronger. It's all about character. We have to get our heads up this week."
After three games in charge, Johnson's record stands at an inconsequential win against the Pacific Islanders two weeks ago and two defeats, the first against Australia last weekend and now this record thrashing by a South Africa side whose scrambled victories against Wales and Scotland had alerted England to the possibility of a morale-bolstering success.
Instead, England continued where they had left off a week earlier with a frustrating performance in which the team's potential, evident from passages when they tested South Africa's defence to the limit, was heavily outweighed by their propensity for making a hash of things. Admittedly, though, they did not fall apart completely until the last third of the match when the visitors' sheer strength and knowhow turned England's misery into a humiliation.
The potential resides most obviously in the backs. Sadly, though, on this day it was their lack of experience that was more evident than their promise, their frustration at not managing to turn possession into points leading to errors and, worse still, a horrible aimlessness.
What Johnson's team really lack is, well, a Martin Johnson in boots and shorts rather than sitting up in the stands – a dominant presence among the front five forwards around whom the side can regroup during those periods of a match when they cede control to their opponents. The really effective teams tend to have such a player: think John Eales for Australia in 1999, Johnson for England in 2003 and Victor Matfield for South Africa in 2007 – and again yesterday.
Johnson put up a stout defence of his criticised captain Steve Borthwick, the big forward who the manager wants to become a player in his own image, when he told the media that we "don't feel or hear what goes on out there on the field". All right, but what we see surely counts for something, and what we saw again from Borthwick was plenty that was admirable, but not that presence that can revitalise a team at crucial moments.
Having lost by 36 clear points, it is now decimal points that will decide England's fate in the draw for the 2011 World Cup, which will be made with indecent promptness next month – nearly three years before the big show in New Zealand. England's defeat by Australia last Saturday saw them lose fourth place in the rankings on which the seedings will be based – and left them exposed to being drawn in the same group as one of the big three from the southern hemisphere.
The margin is desperately tight – before yesterday Argentina had 82.82 points to England's 82.11 – and we must wait until tomorrow for the International Rugby Board to come up with the revised standings. With numerous different factors to be taken into consideration – not quite the manager's pulse rate, but nearly – the sums are not for the faint-hearted.
