Johnny boots England to edge of history

"To be honest, I want South Africa. I want revenge and I think most of the guys would say the same," admitted the Leicester flanker as he stood nursing a battered shoulder in the bowels of the Stade de France. "It would be good to do a job on them as they smashed us so convincingly last time - but it would be a hell of a battle."

Yet maybe you have to be careful what you wish for. Last night, Jake White and his team were the models of diplomacy as they stood on the spot where Moody had declared he fancied 'doing a job' on them and wouldn't rise to the bait even though it must have been tempting to point out to anyone now touting England as even money shots that the aggregate score of the finallists' last four meetings reads South Africa 174 England 46.

Instead, one by one, the Boks sought to dismiss the 36-0 slaughter in the group game as an irrelevance and then could only come up with the same solitary reason why; a bloke called Jonny. "The difference is simple; five weeks ago, Wilkinson wasn't playing," shrugged Bryan Habana, their electric-heeled winger whose brace of tries helped kill off Argentina's challenge.

"I think Jonny's transformed them. The team was at sixes and sevens without him but, taking nothing away from Andy Farrell, Olly Barkley and the rest of the guys who covered for him, he's just brought back the excellence and experience that only a man who's scored a drop goal to win a World Cup final could have." It is amazing how Wilkinson's aura now acts not only to radiate confidence in his own team but can also seem to blind and sometimes paralyse the opposition into doubting themselves.

That a French team with such power, pace and glorious attacking capabilities was reduced to playing such a directionless kicking game for large chunks of Saturday's game was surely down to fear of one man's capacity to punish them if they strayed from their safetyfirst path. Some folk here will never forgive coach Bernard Laporte for being prosaic when he needed to dare.

Of course the irony was that Wilko's kicking game was again largely awry by his standards - although his defensive work and his generalship was of superlative order - but it was still shown up to be "majestic" - French sports paper L'Equipe's description - when most required. "Choosing to live by the boot," it noted of the penalty/drop goal finale, "France died by the boot".

Surely, South Africa won't take on the same challenge of engaging Wilkinson in a kicking contest when they have all the equipment to run England's thirtysomethings ragged all around the field with the pace of their stonking back row, the thrusts of Fourie Du Preez, the best scrum-half in the world, and the brilliance of Habana, which is beginning to smack increasingly of genius.

On Saturday, the French scrum-half Jean-Baptiste Elissalde reckoned the main reason for France's failure was that, after the exertions of the New Zealand victory, this proved one game too many as they "simply ran out of gas". One can't help worrying that the same fate could yet befall Phil Vickery's endlessly heroic crew as they go for a fifth successive do-or-die win in as many weekends.

The physical and mental toll has to tell at some point. Several England players admitted that they had to play the last 10 nail-biting minutes almost on auto-pilot, with Simon Shaw feeling his engine had gone completely. Yet, of course, they believe they are ready for one last supreme, career-defining moment.

Or in Wilkinson's case, a second careerdefining moment on Saturday which would elevate him, in my book, to being the greatest big game player we have ever boasted in any major team sport should he pilot England to unique backto-back titles. "We'll dig deep, recover, stick together and go out there and give it everything," he said, though by now that's taken as read about him and his teammates.

They don't care about any predictions anyone makes about them; they never have. Once more unto the breach, they are determined, as Joe Worsley put it, to make sure the humble pie runs out in the press room.

"It's like this; we know just how good South Africa are; they're undoubtedly favourites," said Martin Corry. "But we know with this World Cup that being favourites counts for absolutely nothing."

Especially against a mule-headed team which keeps battering through all the known rules of form and logic beneath the now fabled Phil Vickery motto: "Sometimes in sport, things don't make sense . . ."