other, the traffic warden wandering past a TV shop, the unborn child listening intently to the excited bark of the radio, the ardent New Zealander who literally bleeds rugby balls (a common diet-related issue in that part of the world), the mystified Venezuelan, the long-dead early rugby legends tuning in via the latest Ouija app, and even, perhaps, the dyed-in-the-heart rugby league fan.

Previous Rugby World Cup finals have mostly offered volcanic intensity, tension that could be felt on Mars, some kicking, some more kicking, and enough risk and adventure to fill a yoghurt pot. They have been rather like watching two rhinoceroses racing to give birth to a baby triceratops. Gripping, tense, exciting in their own distinctive way, tinged with a sense of history in the making. Butsomewhat lacking in expansive, vibrant movement.

A compilation of Great Rugby World Cup Final Tries 1987-2011 would have been very short indeed. In fact, in the build-up to the final, World Rugby did indeed post a short compilation video whose blurb claimed that it contained “11 of the greatest ever Rugby World Cup final tries”. After what we can assume was an exhaustive and often fractious discussion by a specially-convened elite judging panel, zero insufficiently-great tries were culled from the list, out of the grand total of 11 scored in the first seven Rugby World Cup finals. Four were scored in the 1987 final, then seven in the next six showpieces.

At least four of those 11 tries have now been knocked out of the 11 Greatest Ever Rugby World