Andy Goode: 'I do not consider myself a stopgap. I never have...'

Andy Goode may not have convinced England's rugby public, but, as he tells Chris Hewett, that will not distract him during today's massive game in Wales

(DAVID ASHDOWN)

Ninety-eight seconds? It took some believing. When England opened their Six Nations campaign at Twickenham last weekend, not even the most visually challenged of John Bull patriots imagined they would find their way across the opposition line quite so quickly. Ninety-eight days sounded more realistic: indeed, there were those who, recalling the purgatorial frustration of the pre-Christmas internationals, wondered whether Martin Johnson's side would score ever again. Yet Andy Goode, recalled from the back end of beyond to fill the problem position of outside-half, hit the ground running – and thinking and toe-poking and, glory be, touching down.

Running has not always been considered the strongest part of Goode's armoury, not even by Goode himself, who openly accepts he is not the fastest thing on two legs. As he said after yet another bout of bad-weather training this week: "We can all make 70-metre breaks. It's just that some people need bigger holes to run through than others."

The 28-year-old Midlander, a naturally gifted sportsman who might easily have made the grade as a professional cricketer, has always had a nice line in self-deprecation – this alone sets him apart from some other members of a squad condemned by no less a figure than Lawrence Dallaglio for "thinking they're the bee's knees" – but it is underpinned by something approaching complete confidence in his own ability. No one takes the amount of critical punishment Goode has absorbed since making the first of his small handful of Test appearances in 2005 without being on comfortable terms with his inner man.

Certainly, he is the last man to overreact, either when he is being praised (Danny Cipriani, please take note) or when he is being pilloried (Danny Cipriani, please take note). His performance against Italy last weekend was, in bald statistical terms, rather productive. It was Goode's hoovering up of Fabio Ongaro's overthrow at the first line-out that launched the attack from which he himself slid the most intelligent of grubber kicks behind the Azzurri midfield tacklers and followed up to claim the early try. Furthermore, it was Goode's alert assessment of the possibilities arising from one of Mauro Bergamasco's more catastrophically unconvincing attempts to impersonate a scrum-half that led to Riki Flutey's first score at Test level. He also fired out a decent flat pass in the build-up to Mark Cueto's finish in the left corner – the best try of the contest – and ended with 16 points to his name.

Barry John himself might, on the face of it, have settled for such a handsome return, but facts and figures do not always offer an accurate account of an afternoon's thud and blunder. Goode's generalship – the way he organised things, the manner in which he attempted to give shape to England's attacking game – was, by common consent, indecisive: Johnson, not a great one for giving his players a caning in public, used his after-match manager's address to highlight the failures of England's tactical kicking, thereby leaving a great steaming pile of you know what on the doorstep at No 10. Heaven alone knows what he said in private.

"I've learnt enough about this game to know that there will be good and bad every time I take the field," the stand-off said. "There are some things I do well more often than not, and some things I tend not to do so well. Most of us are like that, when you get down to it. I wasn't completely satisfied with my performance last week, but I'd been out of the international set-up for a little while and there were difficulties with preparation that were outside anyone's control. I know I'll have to step it up at least 15 per cent against Wales, as will the team as a whole, but where better to test yourself than a place like Cardiff on Six Nations day? I played at the Millennium Stadium for Leicester when the place was half-empty, and the atmosphere was pretty good. With a full house in there, it will be something special – the kind of occasion that should bring the best out of any player."

Goode has been known to show both the best and worst of himself in the same game – in the same half of a game, in fact. A little over three years ago, while playing for Leicester in an important Heineken Cup match against Stade Français at Welford Road, he suffered all the indignities known to sporting man in the space of a quarter of an hour, missing straightforward penalties and throwing interception passes and generally presenting the Parisians with unearned points, all of them wrapped neatly in a gift box with a pretty pink ribbon on top. A weaker character would have gone down on bended knee and begged to be relieved of his duties, but Goode stayed put, slowly salvaging pieces of his game from the wreckage that lay all around him and ultimately seeing his team home with a couple of blinding interventions at the last knockings.

He gave voice to his credo at the time, saying: "At moments like that, you either fold or stand up to be counted." Whatever people say about him – and they say plenty, much of it less than complimentary – he is not one of life's folders. He does not consider himself one of life's fill-in players, either. Goode is a likeable sort, relaxed and funny and unfailingly approachable, but certain things get his goat. The word "stopgap" is one.

"I do not," he said when quizzed on whether he felt he was keeping the England shirt warm for Cipriani, or Toby Flood, or Shane Geraghty, or Jonny Whatsisname, "consider myself a stopgap. Never have, never will. Why should I feel I'm a stopgap? I was picked for last week's game on the strength of my performance during the training camp in Portugal: Martin Johnson said so himself and I believe him. I started the match, played all 80 minutes and now I'm starting against Wales too. It's a pretty simple thing in my view: if I play well, I stay in the side. When you're the man in possession, there's no reason to see yourself as anything other than an integral part of the team."

If there were occasions against the Azzurri when Goode seemed to wallow in the deathly slowness of it all – when Johnson admitted that England had become "bogged down", he appeared to be suggesting that his former club-mate had created at least some of the sludge – there were other times when he took it upon himself to do something different. Before leaving Leicester for a new life in the French Top 14 tournament with Brive, he occasionally surprised his critics with unexpected shards of footballing imagination. Now, he seems more willing to back himself.

"That comes from the move to France," he said. "I loved my time at Leicester and I'd never suggest otherwise, but everything there was based around first-phase rugby – around a strong scrum and line-out and the structure you could put in place off the back of them. At Brive, under Ugo Mola [a one-time international wing in the grand tradition of exhilarating French backs], the coaching is much more skills-based. Every day I train, I'm asked to get my head around something different. It keeps me ... I wouldn't say interested, because I've always been interested. Let's say it keeps me thinking. It's also a bit safer: at Brive, it doesn't kick off quite as much in training as it did at Leicester. Mind you, the matches are a different thing altogether. They can be crazy."

This evening, his direct opponent will be Stephen Jones, a stand-off with 76 caps and the best part of 700 international points to his name – not to mention three Lions caps, with the possibility of more to come in South Africa this summer. Goode admires the Llanelli man, not least because of his determined and so far successful attempt to slow the advance of the brat-pack generation, as represented by the brilliant James Hook.

"He's a fine player," he said of Jones. "He threatens the line, he's a good organiser, a good distributor, a good tackler. I see him as the heartbeat of the Welsh attack, and as we all know, their attack is pretty special at the moment." And England's attack? Would he accept that as things stand, there's nothing too special about this particular part of the red-rose game? "It's not a wrong perception," he acknowledged. "We have to be more precise in what we do, because there were times against Italy when we put ourselves in good situations, only to find that the quick ball we wanted was denied us." Denied legally? "You're always legal if you're not penalised," he replied with a knowing smile.

This will be Goode's first international appearance at the Millennium Stadium, credited by many as being the most atmospherically charged of the world's great rugby stadiums. "I'm looking forward to it immensely," he said, "but I know I'll have my challenging moments. For that reason, it will be good to have Harry Ellis alongside me. We played an awful lot of rugby together at Leicester and that relationship is still alive. He'll hear my voice above the noise and know instinctively where I'll be."

Which will be in the front line, taking what's coming and, if things go well, giving a bit back. The English rugby public are still to be convinced that he is a viable option in the principal decision-making position on the field, but at least they know he will not go missing in action.