KEY POINTS:
It is to be hoped that South Africa wins the World Cup final on Sunday.
It has tried to play the better rugby most of the time in the tournament while England hasn't been deserving of success due to the way it started the tournament and for what it has, or hasn't, done in the past few years.
But at the same time, for the very reason it has made the final, you cannot write England off. England's forwards only need to trundle their way into South African territory and force a couple of mistakes and then kick a couple of penalty goals and South Africa will be under pressure.
And they haven't been under too much pressure in this tournament.
England has played basic rugby but it has shown that you have still got to have big forwards. It has gone through largely unchanged so its players are match fit, game fit and pressure fit.
They played three or four games before the tournament, and lost to France, but they have experience, especially when someone like Mike Catt is 35 years old. Experience still tells and I am sure that is what let us down in the last 10-12 minutes against France in the quarter-final, especially when not taking dropped goal opportunities.
The lesson from this World Cup has been that you can play all the running rugby you like during the pool games, but when it comes to the knockout stages you have got to be hard-nosed.
When you look at teams like Fiji, Tonga, Argentina and certainly England, you couldn't say that they have spent the last four years building towards the World Cup. They haven't been rotating players and several of them have much smaller playing programmes than the All Blacks.
South Africa may not be all that classy but they have experience, the most experienced Springboks time in history and while there might be a lot more Test matches played these days that is still crucial.
They have got some good players. Francois Steyn is classy in mid-field while Ruan Pienaar is a good halfback while Percy Montgomery at fullback doesn't go over the edge, he is up there with his goal-kicking.
They didn't play an especially attacking game against Argentina but with their wingers they can afford to put pressure on and play off the opposition's mistakes.
The final will be one of the last major games played before the laws are changed and while I can understand wanting to clean up the mess that goes on at the breakdown, I am concerned that the game is getting more and more like rugby league.
Nobody understands the breakdown, the players, the referees or the public. But by taking the competition out of the scrum, the lineout is the only thing that is different between rugby and league.
I can understand that they are trying to do their best for the mothers who don't like to see their young boys getting sprig marks all over them, and fair enough too, but I wonder whether they are taking out of the game too much of what makes rugby the game it is.
