socialmedian: Jonny Wilkinson offers comfort blanket as England seek new identity

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Jonny Wilkinson offers comfort blanket as England seek new identity

Source: guardian.co.uk Sport

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

The talismanic fly-half is a reassuring presence for his callow cohorts in Martin Johnson's back line

This England rugby camp would flummox a Twickenham regular returning from a long tour of space. There is a young wing called Matt Banahan whose tattoos include half a Spitfire (his brother sports the other half) and falling bombs; Steve Thompson is back from retirement and the alehouse to resume at hooker and "trust" has replaced "interactive rugby" and "fronting up" as this season's buzz phrase.

In a game of "gym monkeys", as the recuperating lock Simon Shaw describes it, the roll call of absent stars says that mutually assured destruction is the aspiration in a collision-obsessed age. But just as you are contemplating the Blitz aesthetic of Banahan's body art, a door opens and the gilded aura of a saviour swings down the hall. Injury chaos is the backdrop to today's return of the king.

If equanimity is England's response to losing 13 players from the squad to face Australia, it must be because Jonny Wilkinson is back in town. As Shaw says in his book, The Hard

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