KEY POINTS:
When it was suggested to England coach Brian Ashton last week that he could soon feel the touch of the monarch's sword on his shoulder, he thought it almost too preposterous for words.
Plain old Clive Woodward became Sir Clive after leading England to World Cup glory four years ago and Ashton is one game away from matching, and arguably surpassing, that achievement with a team who looked down and out a month ago.
The honour sat comfortably with Woodward, but Ashton, the son of a Wigan league player, is cut from very different cloth.
"Whatever happens [in the final against South Africa] I can't believe that will ever happen," he said. "Given the background I come from it is not something you consider."
That background is Lancashire in northwest England, an unpretentious land where notions of knighthoods and MBEs are generally dismissed as the product and property of soft southerners.
Ashton loves nothing more than talking about rugby - unless he is sitting at a table in front of 200 journalists and a bank of TV cameras, when his alternative persona of a grumpy 61-year-old can quickly take over.
That approach, however, usually emerges only when his patience runs out after too many "daft questions" - hardly surprising as he spent most of his adult life combining rugby with teaching.
As a halfback he appeared for several Lancashire sides but also played in France and Italy, where he mastered his unique brand of Wigan-accented Italian that has delighted that country's TV interviewers during this tournament. He earned various representative honours but a full England cap remained tantalisingly out of reach when he was an unused bench replacement against Scotland in 1975.
He moved into coaching and forged his reputation as backs coach, then head coach, of the great Bath side of the early 1990s. He was part of Woodward's coaching team from 1998 to 2002, later becoming Andy Robinson's assistant before taking over the top job last December, with England in disarray.
After a poor opening Cup match against the United States and the 36-0 thrashing by South Africa, Ashton seemed at sea, saying he could not explain the performances.
The now-infamous "clear-the-air" talks that followed the Springbok humiliation turned things around as the players emerged re-energised for their wins over Samoa and Tonga and then found previously unseen reserves of grit to beat Australia and France.
As usual, Ashton declined to take much credit and said he was delighted when the players tore up the coaching plan after five minutes and started throwing the ball around against Australia.
"People said at the start of the tournament that you've got to be more definite in terms of having a game plan," he said last week. "My answer is: no you don't. You back your players to be able to adapt on the day."
