Bloody hell, we are in the Rugby World Cup Final!

Damn right I am firstly still pinching myself, and secondly beginning to dream, and big time as well. Anybody who follows England rugby is well used to a lot of ups and downs, but on Saturday morning our team of heroes put in what was arguably the most dominant and “perfect” eighty minutes of rugby that an England team has ever produced. I have been watching the game again and second time around it’s even more obvious how little we allowed the double World Cup winning New Zealand side to play the game in the devastating way they are so used to doing. We choked the life out of them, but to me it was all the parts of our game that were essentially perfect - and we are actually in the final of the Rugby World Cup!

And to me that majestic win on Saturday has thrown up two very interesting points - has Eddie Jones really known exactly what he was doing all along or has he ridden his luck a bit, and the 2003 World Cup winning side never played together again whereas this current England team are for the most part a young side with a potentially scary-good future on the global stage.

To be fair to Eddie Jones he has said all along that the 2019 World Cup was the goal, but along the way we as England rugby supporters have ridden the rollercoaster of highs and lows, and as is the case amongst the English press, the team and the coaches have of course come in for a lot of flak. So has Eddie Jones known exactly what he was doing all along, or has a bit of luck had a part to play in where we are right now? Are we talking about a true rugby visionary who bought into the England system and knew exactly when to start breaking up the previous team to bring in a bunch of youngsters with Saturday’s semi-final looming all the while? Have most of the rugby press been wrong all along with their criticisms and Eddie Jones has simply continued with his masterplan? I guess it won’t matter one bit if we win the Final on Saturday, but I reckon Eddie Jones deserves a huge amount of credit whatever the outcome.

What I find perhaps the most exciting thing outside of actually winning next Saturday is how young the current England rugby team is. Most players are well under 30 years old and those two tackling and breakdown monsters at 6 and 7 are only 21 and 23. If the 2003 team was for the most part a grizzled bunch of leaders who knew exactly how to beat any team in the world and that glorious day on November was the last time they played together, is the 2019 World Cup in fact the rebirth as such of England rugby, with a team that has only just really come together in terms of World Cup cycles?

Christ alive, it wasn’t very long ago that England were struggling big time at the breakdown and now in Underhill and Curry we have got a couple of nippers who firstly played the oft-vaunted Pooper combination off the park in the quarters, and then on Saturday they tackled like demons and slowed down or turned over virtually all potential quick ball for the All Blacks. How immense was that awesome specimen of a human being, Maro Itoje? Think back to how props used to play the game and then watch Sinkler and his interplay early on in Saturday’s game especially. Holy frigging cow it was something else.

Note that I am not going to waste much time talking about that turgid kickfest of a game that was Sunday’s semi-final. I am gutted that Wales didn’t get through because I’d have loved to see a Northern Hemisphere final, but well done through gritted teeth to a tedious South Africa and here’s to hoping that England can get back on the bike and reproduce their incredible semi-final form come Saturday morning. You could guarantee me 15lb bass crawling up my line for an entire six hour long surf session and I wouldn’t take it over the Rugby World Cup Final and England rugby’s genuine attempt at another slice of sporting immortality……………...