Elite athletes, like folks in all walks of life, find motivation in different places. Super Bowl winners seemed from the post-match interviews to have tried their hardest primarily in order to please God; Rocky Balboa did it for his family; and Floyd Mayweather needs more white Rolls-Royces.

To presume that actually getting paid to play sport should be motivation enough is both understandable and naive. Just like that bloke who works in that shop, the day job can sometimes get a little dull for the sporting jock. There will be times for all top athletes when a little extra meaning is added to an occasion, an extra reason to focus.

Imagine being Joe Launchbury on Saturday and being selected to batter not only the opposite number who starred on the Lions tour from which you were omitted, but the hopes of his coach, the very man who, in a meeting one day, agreed with his colleagues that you weren’t good enough.

On Saturday, surrounded by Lions, Launchbury emerged the undisputed alpha male after a performance that would slot readily into the bracket marked ‘world class’.

In a hotel corridor, a team room or a lunch queue, Launchbury is huge but instantly gentle, imposing but visibly humble. Yet, on that field, he was a wrecking ball. Alun Wyn Jones didn’t have a bad game (has he ever?) but he was left in Launchbury’s wake as the Englishman hit like a bus, carried like an international No8 and achieved levels of abrasiveness matched only by the impressive Josh Navidi of Wales.

The quiet man was rampant and rabid and he is now undroppable, whoever his competition.

But his sneer-free version of sporting savagery was not what defined his efforts. No, in a world in which physical prowess is currency, it is his brain that appeals most. His judgment, his skill, his originality of mind. This is now the blueprint for English forwards.

With a seemingly-perennially resurgent Scotland next up, England must look to do more up front than merely crush the less powerful opposition eight at Murrayfield. Crushing is good and can be awfully good fun, but Eddie Jones’s ambitions are broader and his bigger lumps must consider the opposition that lies in wait if the World Cup is to be a realistic goal. Nobody crushes New Zealand, after all.

Scotland, if given space, are sufficiently sharp to tear any team into pieces, so there is a physical job to do but, when in possession, the English pack must cause problems in the minds of the Scottish defenders. In Mako Vunipola, England have one of the best ball-handling bookends in the business and he continues to drive levels of overall contribution from the most cumbersome and exhausting of positions. It is this level of activity to which this England pack will aspire.

Jones has more quality options up front than any other international head coach, so his World Cup pack has no excuse not to be the best in the competition, but there is work to do.

2018 table

Team P W D L F A Bonus Pts Ireland 2 2 0 0 71 32 1 9 England 2 2 0 0 58 21 1 9 Wales 2 1 0 1 40 19 1 6 Scotland 2 1 0 1 39 60 0 4 France 2 0 0 2 39 47 2 2 Italy 2 0 0 2 34 102 0 0

On Saturday, the excellent Danny Care dished out a hundred sympathetic passes to his unsympathetic pack, who battered the Welsh fringe defence in wave after wave. It was a brutal approach designed not only to make ground but also to tie in defenders and create space a little wider. To a point, it worked.

However, Launchbury and Vunipola were shining lights in terms of variety and quality of close quarter decision making and England, thinking longer-term, need more. A handful of plain old turbo diesel bangers is acceptable and useful when it comes to grinding away at an issue, but to beat the best England will need to play ball, even in the heaviest of physical traffic.

Gone are the days of the one dimensional hitman and gone, presumably, are the days of anyone underestimating the beastliness and brilliance of Launchbury. He has been around the block already, but he remains England’s future.