Rugby Union: Heineken Cup: Leicester v Wasps Preview

In a little less than a day, the image had become famous. Now, in a little less than a week, it has become a classic, served up again and again as the perfect trailer for a rematch that has come around with obscene haste since the first shuddering instalment last weekend. One of England's finest has another by the throat and the other refuses to yield. Both are on their feet, but for how much longer?

And then, in the background, lurks the most famous of them all, having what appears to be a damned good laugh. When Martin Johnson is quizzed about his apparent amusement at the sight of Leicester team-mate Martin Corry seizing his erstwhile England brother in arms Lawrence Dallaglio by the throat in last Sunday's Heineken Cup encounter, he shakes his head with perhaps the merest hint of that smile playing across his face. 'I'm not laughing,' he says of the photo. 'I don't laugh.' It is a typically prosaic response from one of the least flamboyant warriors sport has known.

So over to the man thus seized for his take on the matter. He is rather more flamboyant, if no less tough. He, too, shakes his head - with more of a smile - as he recalls the incident. 'I'm laughing,' he counters. 'He [Corry] must have taken exception to something I said. It was handbags. If you're going to punch someone, punch them - don't grab them by the neck. It doesn't bother me. It's all part of the fun. He certainly wasn't laughing when it was 31-all.'

So it's laughter all round as we go into the second act today of a drama so intense that only the gods themselves could label it a comedy. The rest of us must just watch in awe.

Nevertheless, there is unlikely to be much laughter and forgetting at Welford Road today. And there we all were, a couple of months back, bemoaning the loss to international sport of two figures as iconic as Johnson and Dallaglio. Having them square up to each other in their different ways over consecutive weekends is too delicious for words.

Two of the greatest captains English rugby has known they may be, both formidable of physique and focus, yet they are so different, just like their teams.

Reporters range themselves against Johnson as he holds court on a sofa in Oadby three days before the match, all of them combining in a faux rolling maul, trying to wear him down and wrestle from him just one quote that might be termed even animated. But he gives not an inch, smothering the opposition with his intransigent Midlands drawl in the best Tigers tradition.

Dallaglio, though, is a bundle of energy, never shy of supplying a quote or demonstrating emotion - an Italian with a London accent. His team play on 'the top of the ground', furiously pressing the opposition in defence and keeping them on the move in attack.

And so, last weekend, Dallaglio's Wasps, the champions of England and Europe, hosted Johnson's Leicester, who have worn both crowns with distinction in recent times. What a start it was, the Tigers scoring three tries in the first 20 minutes to take a 22-6 lead. That, surely, was game over and yet Wasps worked their way back until it was 31-31 with 10 minutes to go and never once had the intensity dropped. A penalty and drop goal from Andy Goode emerged from those frantic final minutes to earn Leicester a 37-31 away win before today's return at Welford Road.

Dallaglio cannot wait for the match to start and he does not care if anyone knows it. But Johnson broods on his sofa as hacks wait for a reaction to the suggestion that last weekend's clash was ferocious.

'There's a respect between the two sides,' he says. 'Even though they won't show it on the field. With due respect, last Saturday we watched the second half of the All Blacks against the Barbarians and Bourgoin play Leinster [a 92-17 win for the latter] and...' He pauses, realising that he is in danger of speaking a headline. He resumes with understatement: '...and I thought our game was a good advert for full-blooded European rugby.'

He might not want to get excited about it, but the rest of us are. Today, Welford Road will be splitting with 17,000 people in a rather animated mood. And, who knows, if any of us were man enough to grab Martin Johnson by the throat, maybe even he would confess to being a little excited by it all. Just don't expect any laughter.