The fulcrum of an exciting England team tipped for World Cup glory, Newcastle Falcons Jonny Wilkinson has come a long way since his first ill-fated trip Down Under back in 1998. Chief Sports writer Steven Baker reports.

AS self-assured on the pitch as he is self-effacing off it, Jonny Wilkinson has come a long way since he moved to Newcastle as a shy teenager.

Is he the best rugby union player in the world? Maybe, but that accolade doesn't protect the 24-year-old from being the subject of the occasional embarrassing tale.

His father Phil revealed: "I'd been unable to give Jonny some life skills before he left and I'd not told him how to write cheques.

"The great story was he went to Tescos and rang me to ask if he needed his passport to cover his cheque!"

Such innocence seems inconceivable now, though Wilkinson went through a difficult rugby upbringing before becoming the fulcrum of an England team widely tipped to win the World Cup.Whenever Wilkinson returns to Australia, the painful memories of his first trip Down Under as an England player resurface.

Five years ago, the then 19-year-old was thrown into a severely depleted England XV that was thrashed 76-0 by Australia.

It was a defining moment in his career. Through all the highs and lows since then, he has never felt so despondent.

He said: "The 1998 tour was tough.

"It's been called various things depending on where you are in the world - the tour of doom, the tour of death, the tour of shame and the tour of hell.

"Not only was our team fairly inexperienced, having not had much time to prepare, but the Australians were playing fantastically well. Having enjoyed my time with England before then, I'd suddenly seen why maybe you wouldn't want to be involved in international rugby.

"I didn't play the game to go through experiences like that; I don't think I'm a person that should be involved in that kind of result again.

"But if you consider that tour to have been the bottom of my career, then my career has been going up ever since."

Clive Woodward now holds Wilkinson in the highest esteem possible. "You can compare him with the best sportsmen in the world. I believe he's up there with Tiger Woods," the England coach said. But the impact that the tour of doom/death/shame/hell (take your pick) had upon Wilkinson is one that Woodward is ready to acknowledge.

"Jonny was pitched into the England team, and in his first full cap we lost 76-0 in Brisbane," Woodward said.

"But I find it fascinating to talk to him about that now because he says it was one of the most important experiences he went through."

Life has not always been kind to Wilkinson since then - notably England's litany of Grand Slam near-misses - but he has overcome the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to be irreplaceable in the national team.

"Metronomic" is the word long associated with Wilkinson's kicking. As recently as this summer, he booted England to a 15-13 win in New Zealand.

"There have been games recently that England could have lost, but the Wilkinson factor has come through and we've won them," Woodward said.

Yet Wilkinson is typically modest when asked about his phenomenal kicking talent that makes him such a devastating member of England's attacking armoury.

As former England captain Will Carling said: "If you give away a penalty in your own half, 99 times out of 100 Wilkinson will kick it."

Listening to the man himself discuss his ability is an eye-opener. He appears to be unruffled as he stands over kicks, but he insists the reality is very different.

"You can actually see my shirt moving over my heart when I'm preparing for a kick because my heart is thumping like mad," he said.

"There's no way I'm calm, but what allows me to kick is having a good routine. I know I'm mentally correct because I've done so much training. I'm able to drop into a sub-conscious second nature.

"It feels like I'm on the training field because my focus is on the ball and the posts, and as I go to kick it I'm not thinking about anything else.

"I can hear noise and people shouting, and I can feel the wind, but the only time the crowd come into it is when it's either gone over or I've missed.

"Most of the time when I kick the ball, I feel relief. It's only after the game when someone tells me I haven't missed a kick that day that I think, 'Blimey, I didn't.'

"I've hit some kicks where I've thought, 'Oh God,' but the ball's come back and gone between the posts. Everybody's cheering and thinking it was a great kick, but I'm thinking, 'What was that?'

"When I finish training, I want to be able to say I could kick one from the touchline in the final minute to win the World Cup final.

"One day, I'd already been there for two hours when I decided I wanted to finish with six good kicks. They took me an hour and a half because I was stubborn and I wanted to get them right."

It's not just Wilkinson's kicking that marks him out as such a wondrous player, though.

"He's a national treasure," said Woodward. Former Scotland full-back Gavin Hastings added: "Someone like him only comes along once in a generation."

And England scrum-half Matt Dawson paid him this fulsome tribute: "He's the world's best kicker, the world's best passer and the world's best tackler."

Little wonder, then, that Australia legend Michael Lynagh said: "He reckons he's not as good as he wants to be.

"Heaven help us when he gets better!"

Wilkinson's status as a national sporting icon was marked recently when he starred alongside David Beckham in a series of adidas adverts.

He eschews the celebrity lifestyle enjoyed by the England football captain, however. "I'm not quite sure why there's all this hype. I've grown up playing this game and I don't want to get involved in too much outside of it," Wilkinson said.

If the quiet man has a loud say in helping England win the World Cup, however, that wish may no longer be granted.