Clermont's Zac Guildford dots the ball down © Getty Images

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No one knows better than Zac Guildford the life of a wing is full of ups and downs - and sidesteps and swerves and, occasionally, maddening matches doing next to nothing - but the glory of the position was in full pomp during the opening weekend of the European Rugby Champions Cup.

"Not good for the soul!" is how Guildford described the wing's hero-villain role. "It's a strange game, you can do something so well one minute and completely botch up the next. Jeez, that's rugby, I guess."

Guildford was thinking in particular of his slip and fumble as he retreated under a high ball from Charlie Hodgson. It enabled Chris Ashton, chasing hard as a good wing should, to toe the ball on and score one of the six tries shared between the bantams of our game during the heavyweight meeting between Saracens and Clermont Auvergne. There were two each for Ashton and David Strettle of Saracens - and, much to Guildford's relief, two from him too: his first tries for Clermont since a summer move from New Zealand, and a start interrupted by aggravation of the field.

Having played in his new club's opening four Top 14 matches, Guildford was beaten up on a night out in Clermont-Ferrand and missed the next four as he recovered. "It was pretty terrible but I think I've bounced back well," confided the 25-year-old All Black, who has had to do this before after well-publicised problems with alcohol. "I was a bit upset for the first week. To tell you the truth, it put the shivers up me. I've got a few fractures in my eye socket, my left eye, but I took a few knocks today and came up all right so it's good now. I love Clermont, my French is a bit rusty but that's the only barrier. I've showed patches that I can return to my best form so I can just keep building from here."

One of the building blocks was Guildford's classy second try at Allianz Park, catching a restart to set up a ruck, then chasing a box-kick to snatch the ball away from Alex Goode with a mighty leap and accurate catch, followed by an exultant run-in. "There's a lot more kicking than back home," Guildford said. "If you watched the Australia-New Zealand game in Brisbane [and he did, on the morning of the Saracens match], it was side to side; here it's a different kind of game. It'll take a bit of adjusting but I'll be all right."

His other try was as a poacher, sniffing the fringes of a breakdown. As for Strettle, he finished one try with a dexterous catch of Richard Wigglesworth's testing pass and a burst through Nick Abendanon's tackle that needed a stiffening of the body to withstand the full-back's challenge in the concluding dive. Strettle's second featured a lavish sidestep to flummox a flanker, Fritz Lee; but here, again, we saw how a wing endures ecstasy laced with trepidation. "I knew my left foot had landed somewhere and I didn't know where," Strettle said with a smile. "Most of my tries go to the TMO which means you can't celebrate, and you're just there watching it. When it goes into slow-mo it makes it even worse."

Perhaps the most celebrated try of the 20 scored in Europe's first round by the men wearing 11 and 14 was Christian Wade's for Wasps in Dublin; a classic of its kind as Wade played matador to Ian Madigan's bull with a sizzling shift of the hips, and a straight-line surge to burn off Darragh Fanning and Zane Kirchner. The heart soared, and the head wondered how many other wings would have been able to do the same - after all, Wade did have a few valuable metres in which to work his wonders - we know very few possess his foot speed. Wade believes only two or three in England can match or better him.

Of course the other thing the head tends to say is that Wade suffers too many positional howlers to be an England international. He and Ashton both get coverage for calamitous mis-reads in defence; they have also recently both been pinged for deliberate knock-ons, chasing the magic interception, they would say. Truly, the far end of a defensive line can be a dangerous place.

David Strettle stretches over for Saracens © Getty Images

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What was interesting to hear from Strettle was the opinion that wings are too easily discarded at Test level: picked on a wave of emotion of blistering tries; washed up too soon when the tries do not come so easily for their country. At 31 years of age, Strettle has 14 caps, two tries and "nine or 10 years of never being out of Premiership squads", as he put it. In other words, a consistent performer, who says he - and everyone one else - has got better with experience.

"The sad thing is," said Strettle, "that you get wings who are young lads, they score some tries, you put them at the top level, they get exposed, and people just get rid of them. I think, hang on, they've shown some natural talent to be a good try finisher, so teach them the game and stick with them. That doesn't seem to happen on the wing."

Wing for England has certainly been a position of flux under Stuart Lancaster's coaching since the start of 2012. Full-backs Mike Brown and Ben Foden were used on the left. There appeared to be a reversion to out and out wings 12 months ago, with Wade and Marland Yarde in favour. They were soon injured, so Jack Nowell and Jonny May were used during the Six Nations Championship. Then Ashton was recalled on tour in New Zealand.

All of the above are fit at the moment, and Bath's Semesa Rokoduguni and Anthony Watson are also in the mix. You wonder whether any of them will get the next 12 England Tests before the World Cup to do what every player surely needs: have a run in the team, and become familiar with the patterns of attack and defence.

"To me, wing play is all about reaction," said Strettle. "You react to what happens around you. You can't say 'on a scrum, I am definitely going to do this', because you could be on the right guy, and a split second later you are on the wrong guy and you need to adjust. There are so many different scenarios that happen in the blink of an eye. The more you play the game, the more you recognise what's happening a split second earlier.

"That's what the best wingers in the world do, the wingers who get their 13 out of trouble if they've made a half-mistake. It's about correcting other people's mistakes and, if you're good enough, making a call which creates a mistake for the opposition."

Guildford has a tattoo on his arm, displaying a poker hand and the motto "all in". Playing on the wing is a permanent gamble, but when it pays off, we all win.