First reaction yesterday was of utter shock, total disbelief. Anybody but Lawrence. Not serious drugs, not peddling in them, not Lawrence. As for being hook, line and sinkered in a hotel room by a female investigative tabloid reporter . . . again, anybody but Lawrence Bruno Nero Dallaglio.

It must be said that, even in the cup final less than a fortnight ago, in which he led his club Wasps to a handsome victory, there were whispers that Dallaglio's high profile was for some reason looking vulnerable - rumours borne out yesterday by his club manager and also a former England captain, Nigel Melville: "We have been aware for some months of attempts to spill some dirt on Lawrence and had heard there were some huge sums being offered."

But a stream of first-person quotes from, as it were, the horse's mouth? Well, not Lawrence, surely? The post of England rugby captain has traditionally been as much a secret to the public at large as the game itself, bottled in aspic or locked in its own freemasonry behind the clubhouse door.

Twenty years ago, Bill Beaumont, that endearing Lancastrian bear, raised the profile, not particularly because he was one of the few Englishmen to captain the British Lions, but mostly because he had to retire precipitately from the game with a serious injury.

But then Will Carling became captain, and happily began to milk the business opportunities suddenly offered by the job. Putting himself about increasingly, Carling forced rugby away from the inside sports pages and on to the front. And this even before his messy private life, his divorce, and his supposed dalliance with the Princess of Wales.

When Dallaglio became captain in 1997, there were the sighs of relief at Twickenham that the upright and unquestionably officer-class Dallaglio's appointment positively assured no rattling skeletons. Hence the whole rugby world waking up yesterday to be stunned by the News of the World's revelations.

Everybody connected with the game aches to believe the immediate and affronted statement by Dallaglio's mother that the story is "a tissue of lies".

Mind you, there have been serious allegations floating about British and Irish rugby all season that performance-enhancing drugs were beginning to blight the game - it is increasingly reliant on physical contact and packed muscle, less on darting and dodging - and were being taken by leading players, who now, of course, make it their livelihood.

But even as large quantities of alcohol, and especially beer, were traditionally amateur rugby's cultural fuel, the idea of "recreational drugs" remained anathema to the ethos at the very head of which stood the seemingly four-square Dallaglio.

The modern, professional, market-driven game, as well as its ancient blazered amateur tribe, seemed perfectly at ease with Dallaglio's leadership credentials and stabilising maturity. He could have been made captain of any world XV and nobody in either hemisphere would have bridled at the choice.

If a princess might be seen to have had a traumatic effect on a previous England captain, it was the Marchioness which altered the life of the young public schoolboy Dallaglio. Just before he was to take his A-levels in 1989 his beloved sister Francesca, a promising ballet student, was drowned in the appalling pleasure-boat accident during a party on the Thames.

The tragedy tore apart the close-knit Anglo-Italian family from west London. Lawrence's mother led the repeated appeals for further inquiries, and in a touching attempt to be nearer his drowned sister's spirit, Lawrence bought and lived on a houseboat on the Thames.

The path to the England captaincy opened up for him on Carling's retirement, when Rob Andrew and a few fellow Wasps left the London club to build a new one with Sir John Hall's money as an adjunct to Newcastle United football club. This development, the first serious revolutionary club move of the professional era, left Dallaglio as a stabilising force and new captain of Wasps. The England job came within a season.

As his profile rose at a stroke, so did his earnings. Carling's tabloid-induced fall from grace and income was matched by Dallaglio's rise in the other direction, his agent forecasting confidently that he would remain English rugby's first "multiplying" millionaire all through the next decade.

What happens now? It could be seen possibly that Carling's jibe that the Twickenham mandarins were no more than "57 old farts" - he was peremptorily sacked for it, but in no time reinstated - was nevertheless in hindsight the beginning of his protracted downfall.

But that hapless comment, unfairly recorded when he thought he was off air, is as nothing to yesterday's alarming allegations. Dallaglio was perceived at Twickenham as a crucial and important role model. He played the part to the hilt. The truth is that Carling was happy to be seen by the "old farts" as one of the boys, careless about being a post-match roisterer, more immature. Dallaglio was the RFU's clean-cut model. He would have been the one to lead any anti-drug campaign.

Rugby has manifestly found it difficult to adjust to the modern world since its "coming out" in 1995. Yesterday will even more cruelly set back its feeble attempts to do so.

Publicly, Lawrence's captaincy was stern, Napoleonic, po-faced. A man's got to do . . . and all that. It was an unrelaxed leadership, although he was hugely respected by his teams. One-to-one, however, off the field, he was personable and mighty good company.

His Benedictine public school, Ampleforth in North Yorkshire, will have woken up for morning mass yesterday as astonished as the rest of the world at the headlines. I first watched Lawrence play as a 16-year-old when Ampleforth laid to waste both competitions in the public schools seven-a-side tournament at Rosslyn Park in the Easter holidays.

I first saw him play in an England shirt when winning the World Sevens final in Edinburgh - long-legged and coltish, he showed a blazing power and commitment as well as the clean-cut oomph he later took to senior rugby.

Unless Dallaglio can refute comprehensively yesterday's allegations, he will be ruined far more than Carling was when he fell from grace. Let alone being captain, would he ever play again? Where does this sort of witch-hunt end?

Dallaglio has based his leadership of England on positives. First, that he was a tremendous player himself; which he was. He genuinely thought England could win this autumn's World Cup. He could not remotely see any defeat of his team (for instance, that by Wales last month) in any negative sort of way - "We lacked concentration when it mattered, but we outplayed them etc . . ."

It is possible that the truth is that on Friday night he himself certainly "lacked concentration when it mattered".