I stumbled upon an old leading article from The Times the other day.

It was published exactly 100 years ago and bemoaned Team GB's performance at the Olympic Games.

"It is not that we are a decadent people – we are nothing of the kind – but that we do our best to appear so in the eyes of the world," thundered one extract.

"We have every reason to be ashamed of the way in which, having such excellent material, we muddled our chances away," asserted another.

This after a Games in which Britain finished third in the medals table.

I bring this up not to draw an exact parallel with London 2012 – too much has changed in the intervening century for that to make much sense – but to make the point that our judgment of what constitutes success and failure depends entirely on context.

Yes, there was a time when accumulating the third most impressive Olympic medals haul was not seen automatically in the UK as an unmitigated triumph and a cause for national rejoicing.

This makes me feel better that the departure of a man whose tenure at the British Olympic Association (BOA) has coincided with the most impressive British Summer Games performances of recent times has left me, more than anything, wondering what might have been.

Sir Clive Woodward on Thursday (October 4) announced his departure as director of sport for Team GB, saying: "Post London 2012 is the right time for me to leave the BOA".

Sir Clive Woodward talks at a media conference held at the London 2012 Olympic Park during this summer's Games

His statement confirmed an exclusive news story published by insidethegames a few hours earlier.

Sir Clive said he would now concentrate on his "coaching, corporate speaking, media and other business interests" and congratulated "everyone concerned on the best Olympic performance of a host nation in the modern Games era".

In spite of this, I am still left with the feeling that British Olympic sport did not get as much out of the six years that England's rugby World Cup-winning coach spent in its midst as it could have.

Looking on from outside, it seemed as if sports politics, along with the understandable reticence of some of those steeped in particular sports, kept getting in the way.

Once the system masterminded at UK Sport by Peter Keen had delivered such spectacular results at Beijing in 2008, one always suspected there would be limited scope for others to bring radically new ideas to the table.

I have little doubt that Woodward could have distilled the theories first deployed in the cause of English rugby into a set of principles applicable to most sports in just the way Keen managed to so brilliantly from his original base in cycling.

Indeed, I would be amazed if he had not already done so.

Sir Clive Woodward (front, left) at Loughborough University with the Olympic Flame prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games

I would just have liked to have seen more evidence of the two men working properly side by side.

The logical approach, it always appeared to me, would have been to use Woodward as a sort of Peter Keen of Olympic – and Paralympic – team sports, including team events in sports we usually conceive of as individual, such as athletics and swimming.

Backed up by the financial levers of penalty and reward wielded so adroitly by Keen and UK Sport this might have made the success story that has been Team GB in the first dozen years of the 21st century yet more spectacular.

After all, our Olympic team sports – for which, of course, far fewer Olympic medals are at stake – have yet to attain the heights of the likes of cycling, sailing and rowing.

(It could be argued that sailing and rowing are team sports in the sense that most events are for more than one athlete per boat; but there is a difference between these and team-only Olympic ball sports such as volleyball and basketball.)

So it is with a sense of undimmed admiration, combined with a certain frustration, that I watch Woodward depart from the BOA (although he has accepted a role as a Team GB ambassador and will continue to chair the British judo review panel).

Matching that 65-medal home Games haul in Rio is already looking tougher and tougher.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed at here.