This is by no means a new debate, but I would be interested to hear your take on it. At this time of year, we are handed the dilemma: winning or performance? My good friend Mr Barnes is very keen on this debate, and so have been a whole succession of England coaching supremos.

On Saturday, England play Australia. Both teams are missing key players, but England are missing a whole raft of them. Martin Johnson duly has let it be known that while victory would be all fine and dandy, it is more important for England to give a performance. What this means in essence is that Johnson and his men seem prepared to lose the game if certain good things happen along the way.

That nice Mr Barnes always takes the same route. In our Round Table chat last week, he again suggested that the really vital games come round only every four years and if we see something from the England team this week that will give us hope for the future, then we need not worry as to whether they finish ahead on the scoreboard or not.

You lot, my dear readers, will be in no doubt whatsoever as to where I stand. I am of the rather strong opinion that life is not a rehearsal, that every single international rugby match is eyeballs-out, that winning is absolutely the only point of the exercise and that the only “performance” that can possibly occur in a losing cause, is a bad one.

Say England win on Saturday. Suddenly, they have momentum. Suddenly, Johnson, the coaches and the players will have a far easier ride in the media. Suddenly, they can relax in the build-up to the Argentina game. If they lose, they will be engaged in a difficult week and then a dogfight against the Pumas; and if they lose that game then they are in line for an autumn whitewash. And at the end, we are supposed to become joyful because at certain points in these losing performances, England played some decent rugby?

Arguably, there are people more important in this debate. I presume that the television companies did not pay their millions to transmit games in which the result appears to be incidental. I also presume that all those who have stumped up for tickets and will be at Twickenham on Saturday will be rather happy if England should win. Their visit could be the only one of the whole season, and it will hardly be a consolation to them that England, while defeated, saw it as some kind of staging post for a future match.

Sorry, but if you show me a manager, coach or captain in sport who tells us that performance is important, I will show you a manager, coach or captain who lacks confidence, who does not expect to win and who is afraid of setting up the forthcoming confrontation as one of might and significance.

So do England supporters and onlookers really find themselves tolerant of this nonsense? Will you all be happy this autumn if England play well, but lose?

Let us know.

Told you so!

My postbag has always been of significant size whenever I have mentioned the name of Ayoola Erinle. This is the centre who has come very close to becoming a misfit over the years. He was a highly-promising player with Wasps, but they used him usually as a kind of super-sub.

He was then shipped out to Leicester, where often he did not make the bench and then he was shipped out again to Biarritz, with whom he is in his first season. For every bunch of selectors who dropped him, I felt compelled to wonder why.