ENGLAND coach Martin Johnson is one of the few people who might willingly swap places with Alistair Darling in the hope of being in a job that has less pressure and expectation.
While a level of scepticism remains about the Chancellor’s plans to turn the economy around, there is far more optimism that England can match the All Blacks this weekend despite the team’s abject performances against Australia and South Africa.
Yet the only thing that has looked worse than England’s attacking recently has been England’s defence.
Both Darling and Johnson are in similar positions, trying to make the best of situations that are not entirely of their making but receiving little sympathy for their plight.
And they both need to find the magic ingredient of politics and sport to improve their predicaments – confidence.
As intangible in the City of London as it is down the road in Twickenham, it is the one thing that can change perceptions.
And Johnson needs a change quickly before he travels too far down the slippery slope that did for his predecessors Andy Robinson and Brian Ashton.
He has made a couple of changes, most notably bringing in Toby Flood for Danny Cipriani, but he knows that his talent pool is shallow and there aren’t 15 international-class players waiting to replace his underperforming starting line-up.
But just as he has been over- hyped for a few performances for Wasps, Cipriani has now attracted too much criticism for his underwhelming outings in the last fortnight. The self- awareness he showed in admitting that, if he was coach, he would have dropped himself this week as well does however hint at the maturity he is beginning to display more regularly.
But in the short-term the obstacle in front of Cipriani and the rest of the England team is the formidable All Blacks, who were expected to be the toughest of this autumn’s opponents even before England’s capitulation last Saturday.
Johnson has to come up with a tight game plan that can contain New Zealand and find a way to at least be competitive and even possibly win.
It’s going to be extremely tough for England, but not impossible. And if it all goes wrong and they are badly beaten, Johnson can at least console himself with the fact that Alistair Darling can only dream of a deficit of 30 or 40.
