Although he says "rugby is still my sport, it is in my bones " there is no doubt that Sir Clive Woodward has fallen deeply in love with the Olympics. Just how much he is hooked was clearly evident when we spoke after he had given an entertaining Q and A session to the Sports Journalists Association recently, confirming beyond doubt his commitment to his role with the British Olympic Association (BOA) until 2012, despite the much-mooted opportunity of returning to his alma mater at Twickenham.

But once the Games are done and dusted, what next the for the former World Cup-conquering England rugby coach whose philosophy has always been summed up by the simple one word title of his autobiography "Winning"?

Yes, he admitted he will re-evaluate his position, which most tend to think might lead to him reconsidering the job of the Rugby Football Union's performance director - though certainly another dangled carrot, that of chief executive ("not my skill set at all.").

A return to the ball game may appear likely, but could he have Twickers in a twist?

For that ball game my not necessarily be of the oval variety. Woodward confesses a lingering passion for the other brand of football and revealed to me that he was on the brink of becoming the manager of a league club before accepting his Olympic mentoring role. "I had a year with Southampton working with Harry Redknapp and George Burley and it was wonderful," he says. "A priceless experience. I learned so much. I love the game.

"Later I was approached by two clubs in the lower divisions to become their manager before the offer from Colin Moynihan [BOA chairman]. Not a day goes by when I wonder what might have happened had I taken a job in football. I was ready to go but I chose the Olympics only because they were in London."

Woodward says he misses the "buzz" of the changing room and one suspects a renewed offer from football – of either variety - this time next year could be favourablv received.

I have even heard it suggested that he might combine his task as Deputy Chef de Mission for Team GB at 2012 with a mentoring role to the British men's and women's football teams, though should he eventually return to rugby, surely no-one is better equipped to be in charge of the GB rugby sevens team on the sport's Olympic debut in Rio.

All sorts of possibilities open up for 55-year-old Woodward after 2012, though at the moment he is scheduled to be Britain's Chef de Mission for the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Romania the following year.

He once told me intriguingly: "Perhaps after 2012 I could be a performance director for an Olympic sport. I'd think seriously about that."

When I first interviewed Sir Clive after he took up the controversial BOA appointment at a reputed annual salary of £300,00 five years ago, he said he had been ''bowled over" by what he had observed from Olympic sports and their participants. He remains in awe.

"When you see the athletes and what they put into it you just go' 'Wow!' They are fantastic.

"It knocks me out when I see what people like Paula Radcliffe, Jessica Ennis and Mark Cavendish put themselves through.

"You have to be someone very special to be an Olympic athlete. Winning a gold medal in the Olympics surely has to be then hardest thing in sport.

"There hasn't been a single Olympic sport I have come across that hasn't got real talent."


He says he was "quite happy" to be watching the beach volleyball test event when England's rugby team were losing to Wales, a result he says was a wake-up call. "But England are in good shape to make a big impact in the World Cup."

He flies to New Zealand next month, taking two weeks off from his day job as the BOA's director of elite performance to watch the tournament, picking the All Blacks and Australia to contest the final.

However he reckons England can get there "but they have got to win every game. I don't think that there's been a team which has lost a game on the way and won the World Cup."

He says there are parallels with mentoring rugby players and Olympic athletes. "In some ways what I do is very similar to what I was doing before, for dealing with someone like Jonny Wilkinson is really no different to working with an Olympic athlete. The fundamentals are basically the same, they all want to be winners.

"In working with the athletes themselves I think what I achieved in rugby helps as it gives me a certain amount of kudos. But once you get past that initial respect, you've then got to deliver back help by them by understanding what they want and how they want to do it, even if it doesn't fit the norm."

Rugby people tell you of Woodward's win-or-bust ruthlessness, his vibrant imagination and bullish forthrightness, characteristics once unfamiliar to the thankfully vanishing breed Olympic blazerati.

But he can also be charming and disarming, as UK Sport the government-backed agency responsible for lottery funding and high performance sport, finally discovered, overcoming their initial wariness about his involvement in what they regarded as their patch by inviting him into their tent, including him the Mission 2012 performance panel which will monitor the progress of all Olympic and Paralympic sports in the run-up to the London Games.

Woodward has always been left field, and is nothing if not innovative. So it seems his mission is one of coordinator, not enforcer. "Exactly, and it is a role I really enjoy." This is reflected in his association with amateur boxing, in which he has a particular interest.

In common with the rest of us he is highly critical of AIBA's seemingly obstructive ban on pro-linked coaches like GB's Rob McCracken.

"It is a devastating blow," he says. "You need the guy you've been working with all along in your corner when it matters. I think it is quite wrong, and very unfair."

Woodward sees 2012 as "the biggest challenge if my life because of the importance to the country," adding. "There are so many good things happening in lour sport at the moment, from England's cricketers proving themselves the best in the world to some terrific results from our prospective Olympians, particularly in some of the successful test events, which have proved we were right to give sports whose Olympic potential was questioned a place in the Games.

"In these past few weeks it has been down to sport to give us that feel-good factor and put a smile back on the face of the nation."

Woodward has had his critics - and still does - but the man knows how to get results from potential high achievers and there can be no question of his absolute commitment to the Olympic cause, or his affinity with those on the shop floor.

"The thing I've learned in sport," he says, "is that while you can bullshit the administrators, the coaches, and sometimes even the public, you can't bullshit the athletes. And once I get my teeth into something, I don't let it go."

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire