‘If Jones goes, England would be crazy not to consider Schmidt’

that his career was heading nowhere if he did not get a grip of himself. His essentially easy-going nature has made it tricky at times to deal with the harsh scrutiny that surrounds a national captain, although he has long had a perspective on truly serious matters given that his Middlesbrough-reared mother, Patricia, was a probation officer in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and the killing of two young men, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, as detailed in the book, traumatised his local community of Poyntzpass.

Best has concerns for the current generation of players as they try to deal with the invasive barbs of social media. “Once you get burnt once, you get fearful of what is coming next and from where,” he said. “Everyone says they want players to show personality, yet when they say something, they get chastised. I do worry about people’s mental health. Criticism of your performance is wholly legitimate. Nasty personal attacks are not. The worst thing is that you can’t wholly shield yourself from it. It’s everywhere.”

Best has not been immune from periods of introspection and self-doubt, acknowledging that he was spurred on more by “fear of failure” than by any selfaggrandising instincts.

“People see the show on the field but they don’t know about all the anxieties that have gone before,” said Best, who used a hypnotherapist during his career and who has been seeing a psychologist since retirement to help him “fill the void” of not playing.