Johnson's Youthful Side Must Be Wary of Watchful Eyes

Martin Johnson officially starts work as England's team manager the week after next, but his in-tray is already bulging.

Johnson has been making his views known this week to the England management after Auckland police started investigating allegations made about an incident said to involve four players in the early hours following the first Test defeat to New Zealand.

Johnson went on numerous tours as a player, in both the amateur and professional eras, and his ire was not directed at the four players so much as the management for not ensuring that the squad, whose hotel in Auckland was in an area known for its nightlife, were kept on a tight rein.

His tour manager, Rob Andrew, has some explaining to do on his return. Andrew has answered few questions about the allegations this week, able to hide behind the police investigation, but a pertinent question is whether the players broke a curfew or whether they had been given permission to party the night away.

It has not been a happy year for Andrew, whose review after England's World Cup campaign highlighted Brian Ashton as the man to lead the men in white into the 2011 World Cup and beyond; less than five months later, Johnson was the man for the future and Ashton was on his way.

Andrew needs a few months out of the headlines, but his prospects of a low profile hinge on the outcome of the police inquiries. It all means that Johnson will have a free rein when he takes over and the longest of honeymoon periods.

Johnson is due to name his inaugural elite squad in his first week in charge and one factor that has emerged this week is the relative lack of experience in the England squad: no Martin Corry, no Lawrence Dallaglio, no Phil Vickery, no Simon Shaw, players who were all part of last year's World Cup campaign.

Managements can lay down rules, but senior players offer younger ones the lead. A danger is not just that the nature of rugby tours has changed in the professional era but that it is no longer a case of staying away from the eyes of story-hungry reporters.

The days of journalists staying in the same hotels as teams were over before the end of amateurism, but the threat to players anxious to enjoy themselves and indulge in behavior they would not like to be made public lies not in the traditional media, who have always turned a blind eye to what goes on off the field, but modern technology.

Mobile phones and the internet have spawned the citizen journalist with stills and videos quickly finding their way on to the internet. A concern for the England management this week would not just have been what the police investigation uncovered but whether footage involving players would end up on YouTube.

Rugby tours used to be seen as a reward, a way of letting hair down at the end of a long season at someone else's expense, but they are now part of the job. They are, by and large, unfulfilling to report on because training sessions are closed, there are no midweek matches to offer a diversion from the routine, media access is rationed and strictly controlled, and there is a pervasive whiff of antiseptic.

It is one reason why the smallest of rows are magnified and why dirt is rabidly seized on. It is worse for players, cocooned and corralled after 10 months of non-stop rugby. Small wonder that crowds in the southern hemisphere rarely reach capacity for incoming tours.

Johnson will be reading the riot act when he takes charge of his first training session, reminding the players that they have a wider responsibility than to themselves and their team-mates. They are public property and in every bar, 1,000 journalists lie in wait, camera phones in hand.