Those who represent England on the rugby field generally go about their business in the belief that everyone else hates them. No argument there but they are often wrong about the cause, which they presume to be a reaction against a certain arrogance that comes from being rich, powerful and possessed by an unshakeable sense of entitlement founded on their role in the game's origins. In fact they are disliked because of the way they play, and never was that clearer than on Saturday in Dunedin.

England have no history of bringing imagination or creativity to the 15-man game and it was evident against Argentina that they are not about to start now. This was a horrible performance in every respect, from the challenges by Courtney Lawes and James Haskell that removed Gonzalo Tiesi from the tournament and put Felipe Contepomi out of Argentina's next match to the language used by Haskell when drawing the referee's attention to an alleged attempt to gouge his eyes, a complaint he later withdrew, putting his outburst down to "over-exuberance".

Would that even the tiniest hint of exuberance were detectable in the way the team play, because worst of all was the combination of tactical cynicism and a fundamental lack of inventiveness shown by a squad who have spent three-and-a-half years under the same coaching team and yet ended their opening match of the tournament giving routine explanations for the poverty of their performance.

Rugby is not a game for the naïve and none of the contenders at this World Cup is a stranger to calculated abuse of the laws. Every squad has a player or two skilled in the arts of surreptitious obstruction at the breakdown or liable to commit a wild tackle. But the neutral is encouraged to overlook that sort of thing when the teams in question are also capable of infusing their game with individual or collective imagination. Ben Youngs's try apart, England's frequent transgressions against Argentina were unredeemed by any quality more elevated than physical effort, which is why they are so hard for outsiders to love or even admire.

Martin Johnson's priority – as a second-row forward, a captain and now a head coach – has always been to find a way to win. And that, as his players and many commentators pointed out, was exactly what happened on Saturday. From his perspective the nature of the victory is of no importance. But when such a restricted vision, even belonging to a great rugby man and a terrific bloke, is brought to bear on the team's overall philosophy, the outcome is unlikely to make the heart sing. If rugby is not just about constructing tries from the end of the world, neither is it about draining the last drop of joy from the game.

In a sense, however, this may be great news for England, whose recent World Cup history suggests that lacklustre performance is no hindrance to progress and can even, if accompanied by sufficient doggedness, create the platform for success. Embedded in their collective memory is the final of 1991, when they suddenly decided to start throwing the ball around and paid the penalty. In 2003 Clive Woodward's World Cup winners were heavily criticised for the stodginess of their play all the way to the moment of victory, and four years later there were similar concerns when England emerged from their pool despite conceding 36 unanswered points to the Springboks and reached the final without persuading observers to apply superlatives to anything other than the unlikeliness of their revival.

England are good at one thing: a limited game based on forward power and mental resilience. A year ago they discovered that they have the players – Ben Foden, Chris Ashton, Youngs – to do better than that but the ability to play fully joined-up rugby on a consistent basis remains beyond them. And so, in all probability, they will make their lumbering way through the tournament accompanied by clouds of disapproval, extricating themselves from a series of unpromising positions by "finding a way to win", as unencumbered as ever by the tiresome need to enlighten or entertain.

Why not replace Capello with a part-timer?

Although the idea of dismissing Fabio Capello before the Euro 2012 finals sounds like a good one, the problem of securing a credible replacement may deter the FA from taking the decision said to be favoured by some senior figures. Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson seem the most likely candidates but would they want to leave their current posts at Tottenham and West Brom for a job that might last only a matter of weeks? Sooner or later someone will suggest that one of them might be persuaded to take over on a part-time basis, as Kevin Keegan did in February 1999. Three months later, with Fulham safely promoted, Keegan accepted the England role on a permanent basis.

The argument that managing the national team is not a full-time job surfaces from time to time, usually accompanied by a shout of "Eureka!" Besides Keegan, however, there is a shortage of helpful precedents. Perhaps the best is the case of Jimmy Murphy, Matt Busby's assistant at Old Trafford, who was still coping with the consequences of the Munich tragedy when he managed Wales at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. But for an injury that cost him the inclusion of John Charles against Brazil, Murphy might even have come home a winner.

Murray's tired excuse



It is a truth universally acknowledged that when it comes to taking the final step to a grand slam victory, the problem with Andy Murray lies in his head. After losing to Rafael Nadal in New York he spoke of the strain of playing three matches in three days and of trying to conclude points quickly in the first two sets of the semi-final through fear of fatigue in a long match. "A little bit was because I was second-guessing myself physically and wondering how I would feel if I had to play 30 or 40 long rallies," he said. "But I felt OK at the end, given the circumstances." He might have felt even better had someone advised him to play every point with maximum intensity. How much longer will it take him to learn that he will never reach his ultimate goal by giving himself reasons to lift his foot off the throttle?