ONE FROM THE ARCHIVES MONDAY MARCH 31st, 2003:Keith Duggan meets the England captain after the match in 2003, and finds him - even in the act of sipping tea - a powerful presence

DAINTY THE tea-cup looks in his hands. Two lumps please, you’re the bee’s knees. A steaming brew for the winning captain on a sunny Sunday afternoon. How perfectly English!

“Thanks,” breathes Martin Johnson as he takes a sip. Up close, the Englishman has a magnificent face. It is like one of the stone carvings from Mount Rushmore come to life. As the sun dips into the Irish Sea and a chill descends across Lansdowne, he contemplates what completion is finally like.

No more final-day humiliations or near misses. No rain, even. It could not have been dreamed more perfectly. But the Leicester man grimaces. Ecstasy is not an emotion that comes easily to him.

“Well, it is nice to get it won,” he says after a pause. “If we had lost today, it would have been horrible. Would have been a nightmare really. And of all the games we have played, this was probably the most difficult. Ireland are probably a better team than they were when they beat us in 2001 and it took a very good performance for us to beat them here.”

Clive Woodward had long said his piece and left when Johnson finally emerged from the catacombs of the West Stand. The funny thing was they assigned a team of minders to escort Johnson through the straggling autograph-hunters and media folk standing around waiting for the sake of waiting.

Minders. As if the biggest man ever to leave Solihull needed looking after. As Brian O’Driscoll observed earlier this week, he is as tough as they come. Stand beside Johnson and you see the world on a different scale.

Before the anthems even sounded for the biggest game this old place has seen, Johnson stamped his authority on the proceedings. Asked to move his troops towards the Havelock Square end for the performances, Johnson knotted his brow into that famous scowl, dark enough to blot out the sun, and shook his head.

“We lined up the side we were defending,” he maintained later on. “Nobody said anything to us about it before the game so we just lined up on the half of the pitch we were playing on the same as we do before every international. You have got to tell people before the game and we certainly had no idea.”

Twice the authorities asked him to usher his troops across the halfway line. The big man shook his head. The Lansdowne crowd, half-delirious already, rose in a lusty boo. They dispatched another peace envoy.

Again, he shook his head.

“They said will you move your lads up and we said no, we are playing this way,” he explained. “It was all a fuss over nothing. People don’t come to watch – with all respect to the Irish president – people don’t come to watch presentations, they come to watch a game of rugby.”

A game that was Johnson’s 74th for his country. England’s past and her rugby future have changed utterly under his unflinching gaze. Johnson, after all, provides direct lineage back to the Wade Dooley era. It was still Thatcher’s country when Johnson cut his teeth.

Younger players, aglow with stardust so gifted have they been, have come to wear the white and disappeared again. Johnson has survived and grown and is now not so much a player as the very foundation upon which this team has been built.

So surely now he is happy, surely there’s a sense of fulfilment.

“It’s not as if we have all come off the field and put it on our laminated list of big games won,” he protests. “Look, it’s a Grand Slam. It’s a great achievement. If we missed out, well, we would all be sitting here wondering why we lost it. As we all know, it’s a lot better to win.”

He grins: “And it keeps you lot off our backs.”

What it will lead to, of course, is greater expectations. Now, the World Cup beckons and the last 20 minutes of this game, just a showcase really, have excited the chattering classes.

“Oh, you’re living in the 1970s if you think that is an issue,” he says, throwing his eyes skywards. “We’ve always been able to catch a ball – wasn’t as if people couldn’t catch a ball 10 years ago. I thought Ireland had to chase the game at the end and that probably led to one or two tries for us – Geordan’s interception for example – they had to try and force it.

“They were in exactly the same position as we were in a couple of years ago where the other team can sit back and defend and just pick you off. It was a firm pitch, nice and sunny and probably suited us quite a bit. Ireland tried to play quite a bit of rugby.

“They ran it wide a lot and made a few half breaks that we managed to cover. So it was great to get in for a try so early and to be ahead at the half.

“Then in the second, when we got to 20-6 up, they probably felt the pressure was on them more than it actually was because they had to chase it. But there was still, plenty of time left. It comes down to experience.”

And now, for England, destiny awaits in October. At least that is how it will be painted.

“I don’t think this makes us favourites. No. It’s hard enough to win in Europe, let alone in the southern hemisphere. Those are still the sides to beat.”

He drains his tea-cup and nods a farewell. The room is empty without him.

Later, the grey stand rumbles as an evening commuter train rolls through Lansdowne.

Or perhaps it is just Martin Johnson leaving the ground.