As the rugby community eagerly anticipates the forthcoming World Cup it is clear that for the England fans there is a feeling of real uncertainty about how they anticipate their team performing. Let’s be clear, at the last World Cup tournament in New Zealand, England’s performance was lamentable and with sundry examples of off field discipline, by the time the team slinked back into Heathrow, English Rugby was at an all time low. It cost Martin Johnson, one of the icons of English Rugby his job and damage to his status that he has taken some time to recover from.

Enter Stuart Lancaster, an RFU staffer who had an acceptable but not outstanding reputation as a coach. He had worked his way through the various coaching qualifications to reach level 5 and was dropped in as stand in England Coach until a permanent appointment was made. It would have been easy for Lancaster to just hold the fort but credit to him, he set about addressing the fundamentals in terms of team culture and pride in the shirt. A number of players who had become ‘comfortable’ went and Lancaster approached the changes as if his was a permanent appointment. He did such a good initial job that it indeed became permanent.

Since then England have had some good performances and some not so good. There have been some real bright spots in the past 2 or 3 years. An outstanding win against New Zealand at Twickenham in 2012 and a 50 point win against France at the end of last season.

Yet having restored some form of respectability in his first couple of years there is a feeling that England have not quite ‘kicked on’ as they should. The thing is we are not quite sure what this England team is all about.

We are still unsure about the playing philosophy. We have seen evidence of England playing a fast running game with a degree of success and then take to the field a couple of weeks ago and proceed to kick the ball away for the first 60 minutes in a dire a performance against the same opposition. But in the last 15 minutes England, stimulated by some replacements desperate to make an impression before the World Cup cut, managed to score and put together an attacking, phase building passage of play that was enthralling and almost snatched the game.

By now we should have a clear view of what England are about. They are not short of exciting vibrant young players, yet there is a whiff of playing safe about Lancaster’s selection. We are not sure what his playing philosophy is, what is his vision for the game?

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Stuart Lancaster. A home World Cup with the country behind him. He should have taken the chance before now to showcase an England team that are ambitious, exciting and thrilling. We may not win the thing, but at least we would go down in style and be able to hold our head up in the world rugby community. There is a worrying feeling that by playing safe he is missing the chance to entrance and convert a whole generation to our wonderful game.

Love to be proved wrong of course