Fifteen years after the 1999 Rugby World Cup took place, I still have no idea what the thinking behind the tournament's convoluted format might have been, but there are good reasons to believe that the initial planning meeting kicked off with the immortal words:

"Right lads, anyone fancy a spliff?"

The entire affair was such a complete dog's breakfast that you half expected to find a worming tablet hidden in the middle. After the triumph of South Africa four years earlier, an event that virtually guaranteed the arrival of professionalism a couple of months later, the 1999 rendition was the last hurrah of the northern hemisphere's bumbling amateurs (a remarkable number of whom had somehow managed to hold on to their jobs).

The most obvious lesson of 1995 was that a World Cup had to be held in one country, and one country only. Well, obvious to everyone but the wire-badged bufties who had been pickling themselves in the sport's gin cabinets for the previous 30 years. In one of the most preposterous acts of blazered buffoonery ever seen - and there have been a few of those down the years - they decided to spread the 1999 tournament across five nations instead. Staggeringly, 18 different grounds were used.

Of course, there was horse-trading in the background, but it was still startling to see that the men running rugby at that time considered the preservation of their personal fiefdoms to be matters of more importance than staging a successful event. When the carve-up was complete, they thought their jobs had been done, so the competition lurched from one crisis to another once it got under way. Rugby's old guard still held power, but few of them cared much for the associated concept of responsibility.

Having five countries involved - the British Isles' four plus France - meant that there had to be five pools as well. Which meant that there had to be a play-off stage, which meant that the entire competition lost momentum for a few days. Not that it had picked up much of that anyway, for this was an era of stuffy, attritional rugby. You might remember that Australia won the thing; you probably won't remember any of their games.

It was also a time when the host nations, with the improbable exception of France, were relatively weak. Ireland dropped out at the play-off stage and the shortcomings of the others were brutally exposed over the course of one weekend as Wales, England and Scotland were dumped from the tournament by Australia, South Africa and New Zealand respectively.

The defeat of Wales meant that the nominal hosts were out. Given the ridiculous format, the competition was no more weakened by their going than by the loss of all the other home nations, but a rather different scenario will be in play when England stages the 2015 World Cup next year. Sure, plenty of Scots might relish the idea of England being turfed out of their own party, but the atmosphere will be much diminished if that prospect is realised.

As well it might be. When the 2015 draw was made - ludicrously early, in December 2012 - there was no question about which pool should be labelled the group of death. Pool A bracketed England with Wales and Australia, and they will have a devil of a job getting to the quarter-finals, let alone further. And their prospects at the moment do not look particularly good.

As you are probably tired of hearing, England have now lost their last five games. It is a startling statistic, or at least it is until you realise that four of those games were against the All Blacks.

It is worth remembering that Stuart Lancaster's side missed out on this year's RBS 6 Nations title - to Ireland - only on points difference. Their only defeat was the 26-24 loss to France in Paris, so you could argue that they were just three points away from a grand slam. But my conviction that England may well struggle next year actually has little to do with recent results.

Instead, I'm remembering a conversation I had with Ewen McKenzie in Edinburgh a year ago. McKenzie, until recently the coach of Australia, was a World Cup winner with the Wallabies in 1991, and he put forward his case that any side that aspires to reach that level must have a core of real quality.

"Teams that do well in World Cups need to have a bunch of good players going well," McKenzie said then. "I stole the philosophy from Bob Dwyer [his coach in 1991] way back: if you want to compete at that level and be in a World Cup then you've got to have five world-class players in your team. In other words, when people talk about a world side you've got to have five players who have got to be in that discussion. That's a challenge for all of us."

It is certainly a challenge for England right now. Some coverage of England's results has been laden with excessive doom as they lost by just three points to the full-strength sides of New Zealand and South Africa, but if McKenzie is correct - and history does seem to bear him out - then England are coming up short on the world-class front. About five players short, in fact.

There are decent players there, but I struggle to see a contender for the Planet Earth XV. Those who might have merited consideration at some points of their career - Owen Farrell, Mike Brown, Danny Care, Courtney Lawes - are inconsistent performers.

Lancaster says he feels no pressure ahead of the World Cup, but it should bother him that so many of his players are a clear notch below where they would have to be to think about winning the thing.