Anyway, he's been in more uncomfortable positions before in his coaching career, not least nine years ago, when he faced into his first Five Nations season as Irish head coach. The previous season his role was as "advisor" to the national side following Murray Kidd's departure as head honcho, and while Ireland lost three of their four Championship games that campaign, Ashton was absolved from all blame and awarded a six-year contract. And that's where his worries started.

A development tour to the backwaters of New Zealand rugby, and Western Samoa, the previous summer ended up in a depressing six defeats in seven games, while things got even worse before Christmas with a trouncing at the hands of New Zealand and an away defeat to Italy in Bologna. But if those results were a worry for the coach, then the reality behind them was even more depressing.

The Irish system had not yet evolved into the sweetly oiled machine we're familiar with today and instead represented a messy purgatory between the old virtues of amateurism and the future of professionalism. For one, Ashton had to work within the confines of the outdated selection committee, and to exaggerate that factor further still, his relationship with Pat Whelan, team manager and one of the three selectors, was far from smooth. Not only that, Ashton had a pool of just 34 fulltime professional players from which to choose from, guys for the most part who either didn't understand what their new coach wanted them to do, or were simply unable to do it. As difficult as circumstances might be for Ashton now, it's nothing compared to how things were back then on eve of the Five Nations Championship of 1998, and the only surprise is that he actually lasted until after his side's home defeat to Scotland. Even the most thick-skinned of coaches would have struggled to survive.

All he'll say now about that period of his career is that is that he wishes he had some of today's Irish backline available back then, but he even tempers that by insisting that thinking would apply to any coach from any country. Anyway, he has enough to be getting on with heading into the Six Nations Championships of 2007. "We've got to get the foundations of our game right for starters, " he says, outlining his plans. "That goes for any game at any level but more importantly at international level. If we get that right, I do think we have players right throughout the team that can actually start taking the game to different levels in different areas.

But that's a rebuilding process. There's no point in saying that we're going to go out and play rugby from another planet straight away, because it won't happen and it doesn't happen like that. On the ladder of world rugby, we're towards the bottom at the moment and we have to climb up. The only way we can to that is step by step."

He does get a bit tetchy when you suggest that he's effectively eschewing his free flowing, heads-up rugby philosophy in the short term in order to win a few games.

"I'm not turning my back on my philosophy, " he insists. "Back to basics has never been anything but a part of my philosophy.

You don't win rugby games without getting the basics right. If you ask teams that I've coached in the past successfully, that's the first thing I insist on getting right, things like scrums, line-outs, restarts, the tackle area and defence. Get those right and you can start playing rugby."

But shouldn't those basics he talks about be a given for a group of professional rugby players? "It's not a given, " he replies a touch tersely, defending his position and his squad's quality. "I don't think it's a given with any team in the world to be honest."

Beyond the short term, where England simply have to beat Scotland and Italy in their opening two games, you can see Ashton's future vision in the players he's selected in his extended squad. Andy Farrell has barely learned his lines at inside centre with Saracens, yet he looks set to start against Scotland, while you don't doubt that Jonny Wilkinson will play inside him once he proves his fitness with Newcastle. Add the undoubted talents of Shane Geraghty, Toby Flood, Dan Ward-Smith and Magnus Lund to the mix, as well as the core experience of guys like Phil Vickery, Mike Tindall and Jason Robinson, and there's no denying that if Ashton can get his message across, England could be a serious threat before too long. Though he won't throw those talented kids into proceedings just for the sake of it.

"I wouldn't deliberately pick a young player because he's a young player, " he admits. "What you do, you pick teams to win games at international level and the reality of the situation as far as we're concerned is that we haven't won many recently and we have to start winning them. That's our basis for selection at the moment, that this is the team that's going to win the next game for us. If I happen to think a couple of the young guys can do that, I'll put them in. On the other hand if I think the experienced players are going to win the game for us, I'll put them in. We may be forced down one route or the other because of injuries anyway."

The more the talk centres on rugby, the on-pitch stuff, the more relaxed he gets and, in full flow, he appears convincing on how happy he is to be in charge of his national team. "The coaching ladder is like the playing one, isn't it? It takes a while to get to the top but there's not many people there. And if you get there and you don't enjoy it, then you shouldn't have set out towards that area in the first place. It's a fantastic honour and privilege and I'm determined to enjoy it."

And determined to make a better fist of things than nine years ago.