ENGLAND TO AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND SOUTH AFRICA, 1998

It was a plain crazy schedule that England took on in 1998. In their infinite wisdom they agreed to play Australia, two tests against the All Blacks and three tour games and then finish with a test against South Africa.

The travel alone was enough to break them – but four tests against the best three teams in the world...crazy.

If that wasn’t bad enough, they set o without 17 first-choice players. There were 20 uncapped players in the 37-man squad and 14 new caps were awarded on tour. If the test against the Wallabies was going to be the easy one, that was a huge worry – England lost by a record 76-0.

It was staggering – almost too hard to take in what was happening. Too hard to understand how they could be that bad.

When they moved on to New Zealand, they were beaten by New Zealand A, the New Zealand Rugby Academy and trounced by the Maori. The All Blacks wrecked them 64-22, then 40-10 and poor old England were in a terrible state.

Their players were physically damaged, they were drinking too much and the press were killing them. It was a humiliating experience all round and they still had to make it to South Africa to play the Springboks.

An 18-0 defeat seemed like a miracle result but it still meant that they had completed the worst return from a senior country on tour. In the four tests, England conceded 28 tries and scored only four, a ratio of 7:1. They also recorded their three worst results in 127 years of international rugby.

It was one of those awful experiences that some players, such as Jonny Wilkinson, used as the basis of their growth and development. “That experience taught me more in one leap than anything else can, or probably ever will,” Wilkinson would say in 2003 when he came back to New Zealand with England.

“The intensity of the emotions were massively important to my development. It was a slap in the face at a time when I thought I was getting somewhere and made me realise I had a long way to go.”