Brian Moore, in his column for the Daily Telegraph, provides his take on the England captaincy debate.
"Tom Wood’s absence through injury has made Stuart Lancaster’s decision about the England captaincy more difficult and his problems demonstrate a wider, unwelcome, issue with which he will also battle.
Lancaster is faced with decades of English tradition which lionises and vilifies any player awarded the captaincy in equally undeserved measure. This cult of the captain has sometimes created a fiefdom and an assumption that the captaincy is almost a personal possession. So, unless he eschews this illogical and occasionally harmful tradition, his choice for the game against Scotland on Feb 4 is going to attract an inordinate amount of comment.
The thing is that before you consider any player’s captaincy credentials, whether he has the makings of a leader and so on, you have to examine his playing credentials. If the latter are found wanting, the former should not come into consideration.”
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