The intensity of modern rugby demands the utmost preparation but the hours between training and briefings can be long and boring.When you have a young family within half an hour's drive, it can be very frustrating to be banged up in a hotel. Some, particularly the older ones, get fed up with the regimentation of it all.With the World Cup a year away, the preparation is not going to let up and so someone like Scott has to face up to long periods away from his family – time you cannot recapture.Some players don't react well to being in a confined situation, and dealing with them is part of man-management. It is a shame, because Scott is a big-game player and has the self-discipline to look after himself.I have known him since he was a kid and I have always been an admirer of his commitment. I remember him making his debut for the Welsh rugby league team against Samoa. He had not switched codes long before and I am not sure that he was match fit, but he wanted the ball all the time and took a tremendous battering.
He sat in the dressing room afterwards with ice-packs on both thighs, one elbow and his ribs but he had been voted the man of the match and he was delighted.In union, if you wanted someone to get over the advantage line 99 per cent of the time he was your man. When he went to league with Wigan he was competing for a place in the best back row in the game – Denis Betts, Phil Clarke and Andy Farrell – and still made a massive impact coming off the bench. Scott certainly paid his way as he has done throughout every stage of his career and will continue to do.. Mike Tindall's mum is not happy. She is fed up with the critics who would like her boy out of the outside-centre position in the England team, perhaps to move James Simpson-Daniel there, or maybe Jason Robinson, or even Will Greenwood, with Jonny Wilkinson taking the No 12 jersey and Charlie Hodgson at 10.
"We are winning and we feel we are playing all right," says Tindall Mike Tindall's mum is not happy. But that's what mums are for, I suppose." Mrs Tindall appears to have a point. England have just beaten New Zealand, Australia and South Africa and completed 18 wins on the spin at Twickenham, a world record Test sequence. So what's the problem?It is as if Clive Woodward is motoring down the motorway in a Maserati, yet with a persistent rattle coming from the boot.
A bottle of screenwash come loose from its moorings? Or is England's big end really about to blow up in the coach's face, either when the equally in-form French come calling in February, or on tour down under next June, or in the World Cup itself?Woodward gave a wrap-up speech at HQ last Monday, during which he described Tindall as "massively under-rated". For his part, the 24-year-old Yorkshireman speaks with the candour that is his birthright. He enjoyed his autumn, and indeed his year, in which he started eight of England's nine Tests, but accepts the hair-splitting that comes with the territory.World Cups, Tindall admits, are won on fine margins. "People are trying to pick apart anything they can from a team that's winning," he said.