Gobbledygook or genius?

'Freedom within structure'. It sounds like middle-management gobbledygook, doesn't it? Or, even worse, like one of those slogans Big Brother's totalitarian regime issues in 1984.

But freedom within structure is now Martin Johnson's stated philosophy for the England rugby team. Speaking to centre Shontayne Hape, pictured, after England's spine-tingling triumph against the Aussies, he said: "The coaches have been talking about freedom within structure and know that if it's on, it's on. That's probably what caught Australia out at times."

All very nice. But what the Dickens does "freedom within structure" mean?

It's tempting to dismiss it as so much hot air, a bit like all those political slogans that go on about "liberty and equality". If you grant people freedom then they ain't going to remain equal for long. And by the same train of thought, if you grant a team a licence to be free, then they aren't going to keep their structure for any great length of time.

But that response is a bit facetious and is refuted by the way England played on Saturday.

Team manager Martin Johnson has not cultivated a reputation as the profoundest of thinkers during his career on and off the pitch; he's the beetle-browed hard-man, not the beetle-browed thinker. But it may be that he's out-foxing plenty of people at the moment.

If you want a definition of Johnson's freedom within structure, then look at the first try England scored against the Wallabies.

The structure came from a succession of crash balls and the way the forwards piled in to secure a rapid recycling of possession. The freedom came in the way the forwards and backs off-loaded to one another once they sniffed a hole in the Wallaby defence.

Never mind about providing verbal definitions of freedom within structure. All you need to know about it was contained in that expertly executed try.