All the best international sides select core players from their most successful club or provincial teams. Thus New Zealand dip into the Crusaders from Canterbury, South Africa go to the Bulls from Pretoria, the Brumbies have brought invention and leadership to Australia, Ireland are fuelled by Munster and Wales by the Ospreys.

So here’s a question. Which is England’s centre of excellence in the Guinness Premiership just now? For so many years, like them or loathe them, Leicester set the standard and they were followed by London Wasps. But Wasps have declined this season, Leicester are rediscovering themselves after a rare season of administrative error (the appointment as head coach of Marcelo Loffreda) and no one club have taken up the flame.

Bath have come closest for consistency this season but they were knocked off top spot last weekend by London Irish, while Harlequins, too, are pushing closer towards a regular top-four spot. Gloucester and Sale Sharks are as competitive as any and Premier Rugby Ltd, the umbrella body, will argue that such uncertainty is one of the competition’s most attractive features.

Maybe so, but it does no good for England. Every country needs its standard bearer, the club at whom everyone wants to take a pot shot, because that raises standards all round. Martin Johnson thought, not unreasonably, when he selected his elite squad last July that it was Wasps, who had just recovered the Premiership title; the national team manager then had to watch the champions flailing for form in the first two months of the season and was forced to choose players for England who were not coming from a confident environment.

Wasps players will argue stoutly that they have never lost confidence in themselves but this season they have failed to find an answer to too many questions. There was a reason for Warren Gatland to have picked virtually the entire Ospreys team to play for Wales against England in February; they were good players, playing well, they brought best practice to their national side — and they won at Twickenham, for the first time in 20 years.

Therefore the return this weekend of the Heineken Cup gives England players the chance to rediscover excellence, which they have not found at Twickenham in the past month. Johnson is eager to see them do so, the Lions coaches equally keen since the home nations between them managed only one win over a southern hemisphere team in November, when Wales beat Australia.

“I’m sure England are not certain what their best starting XV is for the Six Nations, so the rugby to be played now is pretty key,” Lawrence Dallaglio said this week, speaking not just for Wasps, his club, but for every Premiership team. “Players have been criticised pretty heavily in the last few weeks and that’s always a challenge for any player.

“They know they have to prove themselves in the only environment they have, the Heineken Cup or the Guinness Premiership. The last three weeks will have a big knock-on effect for the clubs, the players have to prove they want the shirt for the Six Nations.”

Nor could Dallaglio resist pointing out to the next generation of Wasps that if they were involved in contract talks with the club, this would be a particularly good time to find form. “It’s always good to be playing well when your contract is up for renewal, that helps you get your foot in the door,” Dallaglio said, creating the impression that while Ian McGeechan, the director of rugby, works through the possibilities with the club’s commercial management, Dallaglio, who has been appointed to the board, would be standing in the shadows, strong and far from silent.

France, the only other leading country resting on an independent club framework, have the same problems. An influx of overseas players, ambitious owners, clubs whose form is too variable: the great ship of Toulouse sails on, though they have flirted with the rocks at times this season, but Biarritz are struggling, Clermont Auvergne are inconsistent and Stade Français are what they are, the glam-rock stars with the capacity for self-destruction.

Munster took the European honours this year, not England or France, whose commercial strength and playing resources ought to take them out of Ireland’s reach. By its own admission, Premier Rugby Ltd wants to see an English club restored as champions of Europe, as Bath, in 1998, and Northampton, in 2000, were, as Leicester were in 2001 and 2002, and Wasps were in 2004 and 2007. Indeed, Wasps beat Leicester in the first all-English final in 2007 and, coincidence or not, later that year England reached the World Cup final.

Not without their travails, true, but they were there while New Zealand and Australia — and Ireland — were not. Phil Vickery, Martin Corry, Simon Shaw, Ben Kay and Lewis Moody were the beating heart of an England squad that defied predictions. Which clubs did they come from? Wasps and Leicester.