“Who’s this Geordie fella with the beard? Why should I listen to him?” The fella asking the rhetorical questions is a Geordie. With a beard. Over the years, sportsmen in a variety of disciplines have testified that it is well worth listening to Steve Black.

He has worked, among others, for Newcastle United, Sunderland and Fulham in football, Wales, the Lions and Newcastle Falcons in rugby, plus various athletes and boxers, and his latest assignment is with Huddersfield Town, who are enjoying a resurgence in Coca-Cola League One under the management of Lee Clark.

His present job title labels him as performance coach. In fact, he is physiologist, psychologist, philosopher and life coach, rolled into one avuncular bundle. “For the overall package he brings, Blackie’s the best in the business,” Clark said.

Black is perhaps best known, though, for his working partnership with Jonny Wilkinson. Tomorrow, Black will swell with pride as Wilkinson pulls on an England shirt again. He will not be at Twickenham — Huddersfield have an FA Youth Cup game against Darlington tomorrow — but he will, as always, be with Wilkinson in spirit.

The excitement about Wilkinson’s latest comeback is, for Black, underpinned by a conviction that, at 30, the fly half’s best years are approaching.

“I’ve said for years that he won’t get to his best until he’s 33 or 34, and he’s like brand new again now,” Black said. “In coping with the intensity of the game, he’ll be doing that until he’s 36 or 37. Jonny looks after himself, eats the right things.”

But what about that bad run of injuries? “Jonny has never had soft-tissue injuries — the strains or tears — you can do something about,” Black said. “What you can’t do anything about is running into someone who’s 20st, the car-crash injuries. Because of his frame, his body couldn’t have been made to withstand that. If the car-crash injuries don’t intervene, he could play until he’s 36 or 37.”

Sit down for five minutes with “Blackie” and you feel as though you have known him for a year. In the space of an hour, the conversation will take in Mahatma Gandhi, John Stuart Mill, Mother Teresa and Sugar Ray Leonard. “I’m obsessed with reading,” he said. “I’ve got about 15,000 books at home. Jonny’s the same, he’s a fantastic reader. A student of the game and a student of life.”

Black has been able to transpose his motivational skills into business as well as sport, but his bread and butter has been in fitness and conditioning. When he talks about the lack of soft- tissue injuries that Wilkinson has suffered, it is with real pride, because this is one particular area of expertise that transfers neatly across sports.

“In the 57 games I’ve been at Huddersfield, we’ve suffered one soft-tissue injury,” he said. “No calf strains or groin strains — they don’t happen. We don’t stretch beforehand and we don’t overdo the training. We have 60 games a season and players should be able to play the lot.”

Black’s potent combination of physiology and psychology is perhaps best illustrated by his views of the gym cultures in rugby and football. “If rugby players get into the gym culture too much, they stop running round people and try to run through everybody,” he said. “Similarly, in football, if players put on too much [muscle], they want to show off their muscles and invariably take more contact.”

This evening, Black will build up his players for their FA Cup first-round tie at home to Dagenham & Redbridge. But does the motivator ever need motivating himself? “Oh, definitely,” he said “Thousands of thoughts go through our minds every day, sometimes digging the positives out of them takes some work. Maybe your first impression will be sad. But you try not to let that affect you. Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ That works for me.”

'He's always been there for you,' says Jonny Wilkinson

"Along with my family, Blackie has been the greatest influence in my career. He’s an enormously close friend anyway and that is a friendship that has been built through the trust I have in him. Trust is what he is about, he is probably the most trustworthy person you could ever hope to meet.

"He’s always there for you and he’s always true to his word. He’s in this to improve as a person and get better at what he does — and what he does is all about helping other people to reach their potential.

"I won’t forget that when England were beaten by Wales by that amazing Scott Gibbs late try at Wembley in 1999, Blackie was working with the Wales team at the time. He could have been celebrating with the Welsh team, but he was one of the first people to speak to me at the end and console me.

"For me, he has been there from day one at Newcastle and he has made my career 1,000 times simpler than it could otherwise have been."