Come in number 10, your time is up.

The cry goes up in rugby even more often than in politics and all the play-makers in this weekend's fourth round of RBS Six Nations Championship matches have had to put up with its cacophony.

None more so than Jonny Wilkinson. He may have more than 70 caps to his name and a World Cup winner's medal on his mantelpiece, but he goes into Saturday afternoon's Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield in the face of a media barrage that, in the immediate aftermath of his match- clinching drop-goal in Sydney, would have seemed impossibly far-fetched.

Two of Wilkinson's predecessors, Danny Cipriani and Andy Goode, are also rated much more highly overseas than they are in England. Goode, after signing for French outfit Brive last season, has been on loan to Natal-based Sharks in the southern hemisphere's Super 14 competition, while Cipriani is also heading Down Under – to the newly-formed Melbourne Rebels.

Scotland fly-half Dan Parks is similarly without honour in his own country. Despite being named man of the match in the last two internationals, Parks is not universally loved north of the border and for next season has been poached from Glasgow by Cardiff Blues.

Indeed, he was not even first choice for Scotland at the start of the tournament and could not find a place on the replacements' bench as Phil Godan started against France.

At least France and Italy, who play each other at the Stade de France on Sunday, have, like England, stuck by the same outside-half for the three matches and, unlike England, have not received much flak for doing so.

Even so, neither Francois Trinh-Duc nor Craig Gower were first choices last season. Trinh-Duc only got a look-in after both Lionel Beauxis and Benoit Baby had been tried first, while Gower, like his predecessor Luke Maclean an import from Australia, had not completed his three years' residential qualification.

Wales, who used to boast of their own fly-half factory, and who ever since the days of Cliff Morgan have regarded the position with a kind of awed reverence, have also kept faith with one man, although Stephen Jones had to take his talent out of the Principality for a spell with Clermont, in France, and had to endure more brickbats than any of his predecessors before making the position his own.

Ireland, who take on Wales in Dublin in the first of Saturday's double-headers, have used two number 10s in the championship so far. Ronan O'Gara may be their record points-scorer and may have only last year guided Ireland to a first Grand Slam in half a century, but young pretender Jonny Sexton was preferred in their last match against England.

All of the above, bar Trinh-Duc, are goal-kickers and therefore have to put up with criticism that, in some cases, sets far greater store on their success rate with penalties and dropped goals than on their ability to run, pass, tackle and bring out the best in their team-mates.

It can work in their favour; Jonny Wilkinson struck the dropped goal that won England the World Cup, but that did not make him the best player in the world, as was sometimes claimed. Similarly, he did not deserve to be dropped because he missed a few penalties against Italy in Rome.

And similarly, he did not deserve to be made the scapegoat for England's loss to Ireland. That England played without imagination for the second match running, and the fifth or sixth time this season, was not Jonny Wilkinson's fault.

He has never been the sort of player who seizes a game by the scruff of the neck and makes it dance to his tune. He has always been the consummate professional who works harder than anyone else, practises longer and makes fewer mistakes.

If you want someone to hold his nerve, carry out a set-play, make a crucial tackle, drop a vital goal or land a match-winning penalty at the end of 80 nerve-jangling and physically-draining minutes, then Jonny's your man.

England know what they're going to get from Jonny Wilkinson and they know he will never give less than his best. That, in the past, has been good enough to take England to the pinnacle of world rugby, but only in combination with imaginative selection, far-sighted leadership and willing and no less-talented team-mates.

The RFU should be absolutely certain that they are once more ticking the boxes in those areas before they call for a change at number 10.