Rugby Union / Pilkington Cup: Hodgkinson espouses the club cause: Nottingham's record-breaking full-back has learned to live with the vicissitudes of rugby. Steve Bale reports

THE sweetly mechanical strike of his right boot brought England a record 60 points and with them the championship in 1991. You could say that without Simon Hodgkinson the triple Grand Slam would never have started.

Perhaps it would be unkind, or even wrong, to describe the elfin full-back as a forgotten man; after all, he has fleetingly been in England, England B and Midlands squads this season. But, tellingly, precisely two years after his great personal triumph Hodgkinson does not even take the kicks for his club any more.

So when Nottingham play Leicester at Beeston in the fourth round of the Pilkington Cup this afternoon, Hodgkinson will just stand and watch as Guy Gregory does the honours. He once said, when he was an England player, that he would enjoy the relaxation this relief from responsibility would bring. Now he is not so sure.

'It's frustrating and, being philosophical about it, if I was more in the frame as far as England were concerned, I would almost demand to take the kicks,' he said. 'But I seem to have drifted so far out of it that it really doesn't seem to matter any more.'

This sounds more like fatalism than philosophy and it does seem that Hodgkinson accepts, at an age, 30, when most of the England team have their best years ahead of them, his international day is done. Nottingham's matches come no bigger than today's, and cup success and instant promotion back to the First Division rather than international affairs are now perforce the height of personal ambition.

'England are still important; when I watched the French game I was all in a sweat,' Hodgkinson said. 'But there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. My form is such that I don't think I will ever let anybody down but I'm playing exactly the same game as I was playing two years ago, except I haven't been doing the kicking.

'I pride myself on my positional play and my kicking out of hand - they are my strengths. Whether I was in the First or Second Division, England knew what I was capable of. Of course I wish I'd had 28 rather than 14 caps, but I'd rather be in my position than someone who has yet to be capped or prove himself. And if Geoff Cooke rang me today and said 'You're in' I'd be ecstatically delighted.'

The manager shows no sign of obliging, the decline from Grand Slammer to Test has-been apparently complete with Hodgkinson stuck on 203 England points at a breakneck average of 14.3 per match. Surpassing Dusty Hare's record of 240 (at a humble 9.6) once appeared a formality; instead it is the full-back who displaced Hodgkinson, Jon Webb, who has done the overtaking. His 265 points have come even more slowly, at 9.1.

All this could scarcely have been imagined when England beat France at Twickenham - two years ago, that is - and so completed their first Slam for 11 years. Hodgkinson's decline and fall were so sudden that he was never again an England first choice. On tour in Australia in 1991, his nose was broken in a training accident with Chris Oti almost as soon as England had arrived in Sydney.

He missed the first match against New South Wales, lost his place to Webb, whom he had superseded in 1989, and with it his form and confidence. Cooke's ruthless assessment at the time was that if Hodgkinson was not even kicking well, much of the justification for selecting him had gone.

Webb faced Fiji and Australia without total conviction; Hodgkinson had a further chance when an England XV played the Soviet Union in a pre-World Cup fixture, but injured an ankle. Webb's position was never again under threat and Hodgkinson's only additional cap was when Webb was rested from the World Cup first-round pool match against the United States. Hodgkinson signed off with 17 points.

'To be quite honest, I wasn't too upset in Australia,' he said - an insistence that hardly squares with the glum face that became familiar as the tour passed. 'I didn't play particularly well, but then Jon Webb didn't play that well in the Tests and I got my chance against the Soviets. Then I did my ankle and I was quite glad just to get a game during the World Cup in the end.

'It was shattering in a way but you can't dwell on that and be morose about it. I'm convinced that during the 12 months after the start of the Australia tour I did everything to try to keep my form and fitness together. But events didn't help me and I will admit that Jon Webb played exceptionally well. Nobody in the world had a sniff of getting in during last year's Five Nations.'

Subsequent events have, in their way, been as bad. Out of the England team, Hodgkinson found himself out of the First Division as well when Nottingham were relegated last season. A hamstring injury has put him out of the team this season - hence Gregory's elevation to kicker - followed by the eerily familiar problem of a broken nose.

Yet as he prepares to face Leicester, the destination for too many of Nottingham's better players, Hodgkinson is almost serene in his indifference to his fate. Marriage last summer, for one thing, has put the vicissitudes of rugby in proper perspective.

And this very week he has launched his own sports-brokerage company, Marquesman, in Macclesfield, Cheshire. The idea, because he is unattached to any particular supplier, is to get the best-available equipment deal for rugby clubs. He has the Rugby Football Union's support and will be circulating all 2,000-plus of the RFU's member clubs and schools.

These things have taken his mind off rugby matters which, it must be admitted, nowadays focus more on getting Nottingham back into the First Division than Hodgkinson back into an England jersey. 'Things haven't gone perfectly for me this season; maybe I lost a bit of enthusiasm because of not getting in. Part of it was my fault.

'What with being married and my business, I have other things to concern me now but at the same time, having fulfilled my ambition it's much easier to take some of the hard knocks I've had in the past 18 months.

'If I'd won 14 caps and not played well or hadn't deserved them, I would still have something to prove. But I was pleased with the way it went while I was in the England team and with my contribution to their successes. And that can never be taken away.'

(Photograph omitted)