Battered and bruised, we are the complete warriors

The ultimate? In terms of the depths his team plummeted five weeks ago - humbled, embarrassed and slagged off as the worst shambles ever to wear the white shirt - why wouldn't it feel that way to their splendid captain?

As team comebacks go, victory would be up there with events so improbable as to feel almost miraculous; Botham's Ashes of 1981, Liverpool's 2005 Champions League triumph or Germany's 1954 World Cup final win over the great Hungarian team which had murdered them 8-3 just a fortnight earlier.

If their story was replicated at football's World Cup now, it would be like struggling against the Faroes one weekend, getting destroyed 6-0 by Germany the next and then reeling off successive sudden-death wins against Croatia, Denmark, Argentina, and hosts France before gaining final revenge over the Germans.

Only this is rugby, not football, and in a pro sport now requiring extraordinary levels of physical commitment and punishment at international level, the sheer ordeal required for the ageing, seventh-ranked team in the world to keep summoning fresh reserves of fitness, mental strength and spirit to win critical matches five weekends in a row would be unprecedented.

How are they holding their bodies together? Even fitness coach Calvin Morriss revealed he couldn't comprehend what drove these battered, exhausted warriors to keep digging deeper inside themselves to find one more super-human effort.

The players themselves seem to sense they're dealing in the inexplicable. It's been comical to hear them trying to fathom what the hell's going on; like Jason Robinson "having to pinch" himself and Mike Catt laughing that all the blueprints for detailed four-year World Cup preparations might have to be chucked away for a six month muddling-through programme. Doubtless to Sir Clive Woodward's utter bemusement.

"The less training we seem to do, the better we seem to play, which is probably a reflection of my coaching!" smiled Brian Ashton, with the sort of self-effacement which makes you warm to the man and his team.

It's the same when you hear Andy Gomarsall, at 33, talking like some enthusiastic kid about his transformation in a year from pub sevens player to a challenger for Fourie du Preez's title of best scrum-half in the world. His face simply radiates self-belief as he says: "I've been waiting for this moment all my life."

It feels as if they all have been. Whether it be a beaten up nearly-man like Martin Corry, a fearless madman like Lewis Moody or the returning miracle man himself, Jonny Wilkinson, how could a nation that supposedly loves its sport fail to have fallen for such a genuine, courageous crew?

Still, all logic says they can't win. The Springboks, from the "Incredible Schalk" to "Smokin' Habana", are stronger, younger and faster. They're blessed with half a dozen players who'd make a world XV and inspired by the knowledge of a recent history of hammering England.

Yet hasn't this pig-headed team, despised for their unlovely fare from Durban to Dunedin, finally bought in to Ashton's motto, the old Ali line: "Defy the impossible and shock the world"?

Let's tell Vickery's pursuers of the "ultimate" in sport that they simply have no chance. Then let's watch them demonstrate to us one last time that we simply have no idea.