Martin Johnson: The Greatest

I suppose that when you've done the full round of the southern hemisphere countries with the Lions, the prospect of starting the cycle all over again with a second visit to New Zealand, 12 years after your first, is not all that tempting. Not at the age of 35. Not there, on the toughest tour of them all. Not when your mind has long been made up to retire.

But you can't help wondering.... Did he ever really think of giving it one last fling in the land that spotted him as one to watch way back in 1989, when he was taking time out from Leicester to spend a season in King Country? The Kiwis thought enough of the young Martin Johnson to select him for an NZ under-21 tour to Australia.

Fancy going back as a king to King Country from the old country, 16 years less fresh of face, 84 England caps more gnarled, 364 Leicester appearances more hardened. As a World Cup-winning captain.

Again, it is pointless speculating. Apparently he was never going to go. His mind really was made up. He's done his lap of honour at Welford Road. He's had his last competitive game at Twickenham and he'll return for his less onerous romp against Jonah Lomu's XV in the summer. When the Lions are away.... Stop it; it isn't going to happen.

On that junior NZ tour to Australia back in 1989, Johnson played in the second row against John Eales. In order to answer the question of what makes a good second row, it is much easier to point to the great Australian and say: well, he does.

Eales was a pure athlete, supple and deft with a ground-eating stride. He was unafraid of open spaces long before they became de rigueur for the modern tight-five forward. In the World Cup final of 1991, he did as much as anyone to stop England's attempt at an expansive game.

And if that wasn't enough, as a captain he could toss the ball to himself in the closing seconds of a Bledisloe Cup thriller against the All Blacks and issue the order to kick the long-range penalty to win the hour. Never in doubt.

I have seen Martin Johnson put foot to ball, much to the delight of the Leicester home support, but it was not necessarily a pretty sight. He was much better at putting boot to human really.

Eales was a gentleman and Johnson was... not. In the quest to find complementary locks, a four to go with a five, a front-jumper to go with the middle, they would have been the perfect match. The noble knight and the demonic.

Johnson has left a trail of bodies behind him. He has seen so many yellow cards that the colour must dance before his eyes at night. He has been reminded of his responsibilities by count- less chairs of disciplinary meetings.

God, he was good. What more could you ask for? Big, mean and only too willing to seek revenge and mete out summary justice. I have this image in my mind of him playing at the Stade de France. He has one giant Frenchman in the crook of his left arm, another is being throttled in his right, and he is screaming at the referee.

But the Eales-Johnson combo also works in reverse. Just as Eales, should push ever have come to shove, would have been a right handful in a scrap, so Johnson was blessed with subtlety.

He may have hidden much beneath his brooding brow, but he never shut off his mind to innovation. When 'off-load' became the coaching buzz word, nobody began to give more imaginative little passes out of the contact area than the towering Johnson. He ran on stubby little strides, but was much more balletic than his poundage should have allowed.

He may have lost a famous line-out at the end of the 2001 Lions tour to Justin Harrison, but in the World Cup final of 2003 he pinched a throw off the same player and flicked the ball from the peak of his leap, one-handed, down to Matt Dawson. It was a reminder that Johnson made the odd mistake, but very rarely the same mistake twice.

And even when he was doing nothing as conspicuous as soaring and delivering imperiously, he was doing so much more than most. At the England-South Africa game of 2002, the BBC used a supplementary camera to follow Johnson, and Johnson alone, around the field for the 80-plus minutes of the match.

The ball did not feature much in this pri vate show. Such can be the life of a donkey, even in the modern game. But he never stopped. Not once. He ran and ran and ran. And every time he reached the end of a run he would hit something or somebody. A ball-carrier or a ruck. And it was all done, strangely for a spiteful game, in the best possible taste.

The point was that he ran and then launched himself. And whenever he made contact, at least one player - and, more often, two or three - on the opposition side was either flattened or left wincing. The infliction of pain by fair means is still one of the golden gifts of the game, and Johnson was one of the least analgesic players of all time.

He was also the most successful captain of England. It took him a long time to lead his team to the grand slam but in that strange period from 1999 to 2003 when England kept on losing showdowns for the main prize, it is worth remembering that he was invariably absent, paying the price for playing the way he did. That is, he was either suspended or injured.

But in 2003 he was there when England won the grand slam in Dublin. He faced down the Irish officials who tried to make England shuffle up the red carpet to meet the Irish president. Johnson stood stony-faced, while Neil Back strode up and down the England line, the martinet threatening anyone who dared budge. It was protocol-busting drama.

And the rugby England played that day, and through the summer of 2003, was all-consuming. When they were temporarily reduced to 13 in their victory over the All Blacks in Wellington, Johnson was bigger than ever. When they played the best rugby they ever produced in the first half of the win over Australia the following week in Melbourne, he was even better.

And when things began to grow less carefree - no, more stressed - during England's epic World Cup campaign, Johnson never, ever faltered. Jonny Wilkinson recovered his poise to drop the goal that won the Cup, but it still strikes me as slightly unjust that his captain was not named Sports Personality of the Year, 2003.

Of course, he might have come into the reckoning again had he made himself available for one last Lions tour. His fourth in total and second to New Zealand. But no, it's unfair to go there.

Except to say that we might all feel a little more confident about the Lions' prospects if we knew that when the All Blacks stepped out of their changing room the first thing they sensed was an all-too familiar menace. We cannot go there, so we can only bid farewell to a legend and wish him a life of pain-free tranquillity, a life he does not yet know.