Woodward has every confidence Robinson is up to the task, but it was also a message for a wider audience as the sport moves deeper into its professional era.

The likes of Woodward and former Australia chief Rod MacQueen, both World Cup-winning coaches with backgrounds in business, will become few and far between.

Just as in football now, rugby is beginning to produce coaches whose only life experience has been in rugby and it is to those men that Woodward urged invention, risk taking and the importance of exploring all avenues for inspiration.

Woodward said: "Sport can learn a lot from business. A coach could go and get a top business guru to come in and get some ideas on how to operate more effectively in managing people.

"There is no doubt my business background and Rod's business background gives you a lot of confidence. You have to keep moving things forward.

"I think Andy Robinson will. I think he is bright enough to understand you can't sit still.

"The England team has got to change now, it has to move forward very quickly and he has got to be responsible for that change.

"Don't just look at other sports for change, look at businesses as well."

As England coach Woodward once travelled to Israel after being told about research being done into the characteristics of leadership, he employed Humphrey Walters, an organisational consultant, and carted the squad off for a session with the Royal Marines.

He said:"Humphrey Walters was excellent with ideas that are so obvious but because you have been involved in rugby all your life you miss them.

"It is something you must not be scared the moment you don't have that there is a danger you become very samey, and that is a danger in sports coaching."

It is with the likes of Walters' input that Woodward believes he can show Graham Henry, now with New Zealand, just how to prepare a victorious Lions squad next summer.

Woodward vowed his squad would be arriving Down Under drilled on his "no excuses" mantra. No stone will be unturned, no 'i' or 't' overlooked in Woodward's desperate search for that "elusive, fleeting winning feeling."

Preparation will be a message Woodward delivers time and again in the next year as he primes his players for what, outside winning the World Cup, is the sport's highest honour - playing in a Lions series.

"I have to make sure the attitude England took into the World Cup is the same with the Lions - that there are no excuses, we are there to win," he said, having assembled a dream coaching line-up including Ian McGeechan and Eddie O'Sullivan.