It is without a doubt something that you'd never wish would happen to your top level international team, and yet it always happens at least once every decade. This is the small matter of a team, drunk on the success of an incredible victory, suddenly coming down to earth with a bump and looking dazed and confused.

For World Champion England, however, the fall hasn't been sudden or even surprising. Since the Rugby World Cup 2003, England has come forth twice in a row in the Northern Hemispheres Six Nations and have endured embarrassing defeat after embarrassing defeat.

This has culminated in a five-loss losing streak, with losses to New Zealand, Scotland, France, Ireland and Australia.

It tells volumes at how the rugby world has changed, with reactions varying from the grim determination of the All Blacks to pull out all the stops to win the next World Cup in 2007 (or die trying), to Scotland's new, improved and highly motivated tartan machine.

For England, however, it was highly ironic that they stepped out at both Sydney and Melbourne in their old 2005 to 2006 strip rather than their newly released kit, as for all we could know, England could have still been preparing to play rugby 2003-style.

Out of date and out of fashion, the forward dominated play was easily outfoxed by an Australia oozing with speed and power. England's rather confusingly picked squad had wings who had neither the temperament nor the experience to compete with the brutal treatment meted out by Lote Tuqiri, Mark Chisholm and Stephen Larkham, who in both matches, seemed to cut through the once mighty English defense with ease.

There were positives, even in the deepest of England debacles in the last 25 years, in the form of flanker Magnus Lund, wingers Tom Varndell, as well as Matthew Tait and scrum half Paul Richards to name but a few. But these players were either overwhelmed by the Aussie tide or dropped by coach Andy Robinson after the first game.

It is a sad irony that this tour was described as one of "development" and "experimentation," only for Robinson to drop half of the new faces and bring in a host of the older players for the second match.

If I were asked "what now?," I honestly would not be able to give an answer. We have a problem not seen since the switch to professionalism in 1996. The problem that, for the first time, we have no idea who could be able to fill the vital positions of fly-half, scrum-half and full-back.

Johnny Wilkinson, fly-half and national hero since his World Cup heroics has been dogged by injury since that final in 2003 and hasn't played international rugby for his nation since then. He is finally fit and ready, but has ruled himself out until at least the Six Nations in 2007.

Other options for fly-half include Bath's Olly Barkley and Leicester's Andy Goode and both of these options were used in each test with Barkley in the first test and Goode in the second. Both definitely showed promise but both fell down in separate areas, Barkley for not knowing enough about the harsh realities of international rugby and Goode being punished for not knowing better.

Scrum-half has presented an even bigger conundrum, as World Cup winner Matt Dawson has retired. England has since tried to make do with Leicester's Harry Ellis, but as two consecutive Six Nations and several Autumn Internationals have shown, with slow and agonizing waits for the ball to be retrieved from the ruck, along with inaccurate and slow passing, he is plainly not up to the task.

Gloucester's Paul Richards and Bristol's Shaun Perry offer exciting choices, mainly because they can recycle the ball quicker than you can boil a kettle and pass at speed and accurately. However, only one (Richards) has been tested, with Perry (very new to Rugby Union let alone the international stage) has yet to be tested.

The final problem area is full-back. This position was ably held by Jason Robinson, however, when he retired last year nobody quite knew who would fill it.

Wasp's Josh Lewsey and Tom Voyce have been tried, but the former has had difficulty fitting into the England set up, while the latter has posed serious questions in his ability to handle top level rugby. Mark Van Gisbergen is another prospect, as full back, as well as a dependable reserve kicker but he is as of yet untested.

All of these problems can be traced back to the period between 1999 and 2003 when Sir Clive Woodward was in charge of the England set up. With his fearsome setup of assistant coaches, he shrewdly borrowed from both Rugby League and American Football in how his international team was structured, trained, rested, billeted, prepared and above all, how they played.

One of the minor oversights of the time, however, was the preference to develop the forwards rather than the backs who were relatively neglected. Gaps were plugged by poaching players from Rugby League (Jason Robinson a prime case in point) and it could be argued that Johnny Wilkinson was in the right place at the right time when he exploded onto the world scene. If it were not for former fly-half Rob Andrew, England would have had serious problems much earlier on when selecting their number ten.

However, after the World Cup, the mistake of not developing the backs came to the fore and was exposed as England have been hammered and hammered again. Today, England is faced with shortages of talent not seen for over two decades, while teams like Scotland and Wales have carefully managed their meager resources with skill, producing arguably some of the best Welsh and Scottish sides ever.

Whether England can repair its gaps in the line remains to be seen, but remember this: there are only 16 matches left for England until the World Cup. And each one of them will be against a side in the world's top 10.

Not exactly a hill to climb, but more like Mount Everest.