How much stability does a team captain provide?

They say he is the first name that should be put on the team sheet. The selection of your captain should be unquestioned.

Do you choose a player who commands respect through his leadership or do you choose a player who commands respect because of his player credentials? Whatever the reason, it stands to reason that if you can regularly play a team together, you give yourselves a better chance of winning, provided that you regularly select the right players. If you select the right captain and he regularly appears for your country, you're laying goof foundations. It is true that nowadays squad sizes are growing to factor in the greater amount of games being played and the greater exposure to injury that arises from that, but if you can keep certain things stable then you stand a better chance.

When I look at SA in recent times, I see a combination of an exemplary leader and an exemplary player as captain. Robshaw and the eternal question of backrow balance may arise but how much of England's consistency can be attributed to his captaincy? (A genuine question: I'm not making the link) NZ has had McCaw as leader and is preparing a new leader in Read.

Contrast those teams with the likes of Australia, and it seems that the balance between leaders and players is too far in favour of the former. Sharpe and Mowen, for example, stood out as leaders for me but didn't have the cachet as players as the likes of Eales or Gregan. Perhaps that is too harsh on Sharpe, who was perhaps Australia's most consistent player as leader of the Wallabies, but the dip in form of Genia last year saw the first name on the sheet called into question. Contrast that with Quade Cooper, who seemed an inspired choice as vice captain as he was coming into rich form.

However, there are certain positions in a team where the risk factor with regards to injury is higher. A flanker is at greater risk than a centre. Continuity is important. Scotland spring to mind who seem to like back row players as captains and who seem to suffer horror runs with injury in that same area. Wales have had Warburton as leader but he too has had difficulty with injury. Injury to any player causes disruptions - look at Tuilagi for centre - and when players return from injury further disruption is caused as new combinations are lost and old combinations take time to reforge. Do teams suffer a double penalty when their captains are injured? Dusatoir looks off his best at the moment so will PSA choose a new captain or does picking him because he was a captain seem more appealing?

Stability and winning momentum seem ideals in rugby. How much does your captain contribute to those ideals?

If there is uncertainty about a captain's playing ability it undermines his image as a player and also his coach's credibility.

Players can have inconsistent form but Captains really can't, a poor or invisible game here and there maybe but their form and continuity of selection of captain is critical as he is usually the Head Coach's personal pick. Coaches have their favorites, Warburton is clearly Gatland's man.

Warburton has been a dicey selection for me as he lacks the visible captaincy skills i admire in players such as Martin Johnson and Mccaw. These 2 are the stand outs for me, always in the refs ear, respected bu everyone and yet, and i especially mean Jonno here, in your face aggressive, stubborn and never take a step backwards.

I think this might vary slightly depending on the country. A captain can be a good captain in two ways: a) a good motivator, somebody who can regularly get the boys up for the occasion mentally or b) a leader by example i.e. someone who generally leads from the front and can drag the rest of the side into competitive mode through action if not through words. Now of course B can often entail A and in itself seems to be the most popular quality teams look for when choosing their skipper. But there has been the occasional example of a successful team's captain who doesn't also happen to be one of its top stars. Leo Cullen springs to mind for me: he's captained Leinster through the club's golden era without exactly showing breathtaking skills (not to say he hasn't been solid and reliable) and while only being picked sporadically to play for Ireland. What's more he took over as captain from O'Driscoll, who presided over a far less successful period by comparison.

Overall I think the least you can ask of a leader is consistency and full-on commitment. Anything less than these qualities and I wouldn't fancy a team to make it far.

It's also worth mentioning as well that some very good players (and club captains) do not necessarily make a good international captain. Take Borthwick as an example. Possibly one of England's best lineout operators and a fantastic player to have in your side. Yet he seemed clueless when the chips were down with the England captain's armband.

I think that those chosen have to be respected enough by the players themselves, and Borthwick always struck me as being a bit too "matey" with the other players and too easily influenced by them. Johnson may well have rated him, but he was never going to be as hard-edged as the World Cup winner. A decent captain needs that hard edge to him, that never-say-die attitude who will never back down and will stand by his decisions. Robshaw appears to have that in spades and has good lieutenants in Wood, Hartley and Cole.

Potential future England captains could be both current locks.

Quins are not the same team without Robshaw. They lose an element of composure that's hard to define, but very definitely makes a difference.

He is beginning to bring the same quality to England. There is a growing sense of "we'll take what you can throw at us, and then we'll take our chances" - it's not quite there in terms of being able to close out games when the personnel change, but it's getting there. I think his sheer workrate, consistency and unwillingness to give up are beginning to rub off on the team. He's not a very vocal or always hugely visible leader, so it takes time to build, but he's part of the bedrock on which the team is built.

There are very different styles of captaincy. Johnson was one of those who commanded sufficient respect by sheer monlithic force of personality that the players would do anything for him. Guys like McCaw, Eales and BOD gained it by sheer excellence.

It's hard to define why captaincy doesn't work. England have had captains like Borthwick and Martin Corry who were excellent players but somehow couldn't bring the rest of the team with them. I think it might be that they tried to be something that wasn't them - Corry too often had to lead from the front and found that his team could not keep up; Borthwick looked like he was uncomfortable being the driving force in the team.

There's an element of chemistry that has to be there, too. Woodward was lucky: Dallaglio got stung, and it was only through that that he found the captain he needed in Johnson. We may look back on Lancaster and think that he has also been lucky - Tom Wood might have been a fine captain, but Robshaw so completely embodies Lancaster's ethos that I can't imagine anyone who's better placed to put it on the pitch.

In the longer term, I suspect that modern captaincy will always gravitate towards locks, back rows and centres, simply because other positions have too much else to do or are too far from the action. I'd flag Jack Clifford as a possible future captain in the long run. He's got a way to go to break into even the Quins 1st XV right now, but if his game develops enough he has the personality to lift a team. I felt he personally dragged England's U20s back into the JWC final last year.