Jason wings in on a prayer

His five-year deal at Sale may be worth the best part of £1million, hardly excessive for a player of such repute, but Robinson dismisses the popular theory advanced by League diehards that his move was dictated by the number of noughts on his contract.

'People think I've come for the money but they don't know the facts,' said Robinson. 'If it was money, I'd have left Wigan five years ago when I was offered a fortune to go to Australia. Money can buy you nice things but it doesn't necessarily make you happy. The decision to leave was hard enough but harder still because Sale are not a glamour club. The main thing is that I'm happy because I know I'm doing it for the right reasons.

'It would have been easy to stay at Wigan, become the highest-paid player in League and have a testimonial next year. People talk about needing a new challenge and in my case it was true.

'It really had to be now or never. I didn't want look back at the end of my career and regret not taking the chance. Just because I've done it in League doesn't automatically mean I'll do it in Union.

'I'm coming here not as any sort of superstar but as someone willing to learn and work hard.'

Clearly he has not made such a quantum leap just to play for Sale. 'England is the bigger picture,' he said.

'England and the British Lions are all possibilities but first of all I've got to make sure I get into the Sale team. There a lot of things I need to get to grips with.' Four days after finishing in Super League, Robinson, ever the consummate professional, will train with Sale this morning and hurl himself into a crash-course in the rules before launching himself as a fully paid-up, bona fide member of the Union for his club's home Tetley's Cuptie against Coventry or Preston Grasshoppers on November 5.

By then, England will have summoned him to their development squad and Robinson will know a little more about the laws of a game which he had never played before his three-month loan transfer to Bath four years ago.

England, of course, have a vested interest, the transfer having been initiated by manager Clive Woodward during the postmortem into World Cup failure.

It was meant to be the first joint RFU-club venture with both parties splitting the cost 50-50, and it may still be, but political interference from the other Premier-ship clubs has forced a shift in the arrangement. Sale's multi-millionaire owner Brian Kennedy defused the potential embarrassment by digging into his pocket.