Here’s part 2 of my short series of reflections on the most important sporting event in our household for a while.

I’m just about over England’s disappointment in the bitterly frustrating final. I had been nervous all week in the lead up to the show piece, and didn’t sleep well the night before. With the games being on in the morning, you’re basically waking up to get right into the event, so there’s precious little build-up to match time.

The main reasons for my nerves during the week were that I felt England had not yet been tested. They hadn’t had a tight game. They weren’t match tight. I thought they were a little undercooked having not played France, and I touched on the weather in my previous post, because that would have been a tight game. The All Blacks were almost perfect against Ireland, but also looked undercooked against England in the semi, having not played Italy in the weekend when Typhoon Hagibis was wreaking havoc. England, by contrast, were almost perfect against the All Black and came into the final supremely high on confidence but woefully short on ‘squeaky bum’ experience, to quote Sir Alex Ferguson.

By contrast, the South Africans had a tough group opener against the All Blacks where they were out of the blocks very quickly but were then outplayed. From there they grew with every match. They also had a date with destiny, national destiny, and they rode that wave beautifully on the 2nd November 2019.