No doubt about it, Stuart Lancaster is proving a safe pair of hands. The 22 months since he was appointed England's head coach are littered with good decisions and on Thursday he made two more. He did not want to lose Toby Flood and seemed to have pressed the fly-half to stay at Leicester and keep his England place.

However, when Flood opted to make the move to France, Lancaster made the right decision in moving England on as well. If conventional thinking is that older heads win World Cups, then 2015 with Owen Farrell, Freddie Burns and George Ford steering the ship may be a bit adventurous but better Ford learns to run things sooner rather than later.

I also like the way Lancaster is making the best out of a list of injuries that could have blown plenty off course. By calling up the likes of Luther Burrell, Jack Nowell, Ed Slater, Henry Thomas and Anthony Watson to fill the gaps left by Manu Tuilagi, Alex Corbisiero, Christian Wade, Geoff Parling, Davey Wilson and Ben Foden he is getting a look at guys not only for the Six Nations but for the future.

In fact, although Lancaster may have been appointed to run things only until the end of the next World Cup, you can see the planning being put in place for 2019. So, despite an injury list nearing double figures, Lancaster's garden would seem to be close to blooming were it not for one thing that might be vital in the 20 months up to kick-off at Twickenham – the demise of the Heineken Cup and with it England's ability to fast-track potential stars. A quick look down the 35 players who make up England's Six Nations squad shows what a powerful tool the Heineken Cup has been for Lancaster.

The overwhelming majority are playing in this season's Heineken Cup, with only eight – Ford, Watson, Thomas, Rob Webber, Dave Attwood, Joe Launchbury, Kyle Eastmond and Matt Mullan – in the second tier of Europe and for guys like the two Saxons No8s, Sam Dickinson of Northampton and Dave Ewers of Exeter, playing against the likes of Leinster and Castres or Toulon and Cardiff it has clearly been part of their elevation into the England set-up.

The Heineken and, to a lesser extent the Amlin, is the bridge between playing league rugby and internationals. It is hard to put percentages on it but if Test rugby presents a step up of 35-40% for a club player, the Heineken can take him 30-40% of the way to understanding that the mistakes made and got away with in the league, the lack of precision and especially the reduction in the pace of the game, will be exposed at Test level.

It is a platform Lancaster has made great use of in getting a feel of whether a player might make the big step without getting burned. After May and the European Cup final, England's head coach will have only Test rugby on which to make those critical assessments of a player's abilities.

Imagine today is 10 January 2015 and going into the Six Nations only eight months before the World Cup Davey Wilson has calf problems and Dan Cole's shoulder is playing up, so Henry Thomas – something for the future for sure but with only a couple of run-ons from the bench against a third-string Argentina under his belt – looks likely to start against France at the Stade de France in less than a month.

Were there still a Heineken and Thomas was with Bath, as we gather he is likely to be, he would have had at least four samples of what scrummaging is like at the top level, rather than basing all his judgments and experiences on the occasional tough day in the Aviva Premiership, plus 63–0 and 55–8 walkovers against Rugby Mogliano.

With the World Cup around the corner and New Zealand, South Africa and Australia ahead in the IRB rankings and likely to get stronger with their diet of Super Rugby, it is a worrying prospect for a side that is high on promise but low on experience, at least compared to the Kiwis and the Springboks. Where Wednesday's intervention by the IRB and its chairman Bernard Lapasset leaves us, I am not quite sure.

Optimists will no doubt say Lapasset might build on October's agreement on structures, funding and qualification for a new competition that was ultimately undone by the issue of governance.

Me? I think the big hurdle is still the paymaster – television and the contract that Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Italy have with Sky, while England are with BT. I hope I am wrong.