Regan has put in a fair bit of time on the scrummaging machine, and propped "live" against a pack of forwards from Rosslyn Park, recruited as training camp cannon-fodder during the summer. But a plan to run him at loose head against Wales in Cardiff last month had to be abandoned for the very worst of reasons. Having performed superbly at hooker for half an hour, he tore ligaments in his left foot and was forced to withdraw before the interval. I've always played in the front row, right from the start, and I did some propping during my school days. But in a match situation in adult rugby? No, I haven't been there I understand the way Clive is thinking, though.

The World Cup organisers want to avoid uncontested scrums because they're a poor spectacle, but the coaches don't want to limit their options by putting an entire front row on the bench. Both Regan and the third hooker in the 30-man squad, Dorian West of Leicester, have been training at loose-head, and will play out of position in certain games if the injury situation so dictates A risk? You could say. By taking only four props to contest a group containing both Uruguay (major scrummagers) and Georgia (seriously major scrummagers), as well as South Africa, for whom the set-piece is nine-tenths of rugby law, Woodward has gambled his shirt."It could be a big test," Regan acknowledged "A bloody big test, actually. The principle challenge has less to do with hooking - he is perfectly aware that his chances of starting the big games are slim, given that Steve Thompson of Northampton is busily reinventing the hooker's role and would walk into any World XV with eyes tight shut - than with propping, an art that ranks alongside classical ballet and raku-fired pottery in Regan's sphere of expertise.If this sounds a trifle odd, given Clive Woodward's repeated insistence that England's campaign must be based wholly around specialists rather than utility players, it is nevertheless the case. This seriousness of approach is intensified by the fact that the demands on the 31-year-old West Countryman are more complex than generally assumed. Why so difficult? "Well, there were a lot of them."The next two months are no laughing matter, however; not even Regan will see the funny side of the World Cup in Australia unless and until he and his countrymen lay hands on the Webb Ellis Cup. He even smiles at the thought of last season's red-blooded visit to Bath, one of his old teams.

"I tried to give as good as I got, but it wasn't easy," he chuckled. England were smashed in every department bar the tight five, where Regan played magnificently). Like most successful sportsmen, Mark Regan has no idea when he is beaten; unlike most successful sportsmen, he is equally mystified when it comes to the prospect of being beaten up. The Leeds hooker enthusiastically embraces what he calls the "hard side of rugby" - once, as a young front-row whipper-snapper at the Bristol club, he told a touring All Black forward of fearsome repute that he "wasn't much cop", adding that he could expect a "nice slap" at the next scrum.