What a Webb Ellis these last four weave

Sideline Cut:The appearance of England in this weekend's rugby World Cup semi-final has surely rubbed salt into the wounds of the apparently endless numbers of disillusioned Irish fans. After humbly accepting - and even applauding - the combination of rugby flair and abundant patriotism that won the day so convincingly in Croke Park last February, the English have not so much reinvented themselves as rediscovered themselves.

Humiliated against South Africa, they have become the wild cards of the tournament by trusting in the old instincts of Empire, literally barging and shoving opposing nations out of the way.

For the first time since they won the World Cup in 2003, the English team have been able to use their status as champions to positive effect. And after seemingly spending the last four years either preparing for or recovering from sports-related surgery, Jonny Wilkinson has recovered with portentous timing. Surely the sight of Wilkinson operating behind the brawny English pack, once again playing his kicking game with frightening serenity and concentration, haunted the Australians who had suffered at his hands four years ago.

At his golden-tinted best, Wilkinson gave the impression that he was able to play sport at a level just above the normal human capacity: that he was impervious to emotion. Because of that, he looked unstoppable when it mattered four years ago.

In the past week, that old sheen is back. It is as if Brian Ashton did not so much coach him as key in the right code to programme Wilkinson to win. By all accounts, Wilkinson is a highly likeable individual. He has admitted to being so self-conscious about his relative fame that he tends to avoid simple pleasures like going to the cinema. He plays and listens to music and follows sport and lives the wholesome life.

But on the rugby field, he has a ferocious intensity that is all his own, not glowering like the young John McEnroe on the sedate courts at Wimbledon or animated like the vintage Michael Jordan or combustible like Zinedine Zidane.

Wilkinson can move through a highly pressurised World Cup rugby match with the seeming detachment of a mathematical whiz crunching the numbers. He tackles and works like a demon, shouts orders, makes his decisions with the ball. But when he kicks penalties or moves into drop-goal range he performs as though he believes there can be no other outcome than a score. Players that face him have surely come to believe that as well.

England have made it to the last four in brilliant circumstances for Ashton. They have recovered from a potentially disastrous opening game; the mood must be euphoric after the thrilling manner of their win over Australia; the fact that they are champions matters greatly now, and they can face France with nothing to lose. And England retaining the Webb Ellis trophy suddenly looks possible.

Not for the first time, the French have managed to gift the World Cup with the afterglow of wonder before the event has even finished. Something about the New Zealand aura and quality has a perverse effect on the Frenchmen. For all the consummate athleticism the All Blacks bring to the game, for all their long heritage of brilliant number 10s and awe-inspiring three-quarters lines, and for all the play-anywhere felicity of their pack, it is as though the one thing they never quite master or understand is the oblique instinct and intuition with which the French play the game.

In the aftermath of Ireland's apparently treasonous World Cup exit, the thought must have occurred to many people that it was as though France had moved on light years from the team that stole a victory in Dublin last February. The All Blacks will always stand accused of contributing to their own downfall in last Saturday night's quarter-final, and the ashen expression on Graham Henry's face as he watched the life being drained out of another World Cup opportunity will serve as the abiding image of his time in charge.

Equally, the sight of Daniel Carter sitting distraught will go down in rugby folklore; he was mourning not so much the loss of this match as the definitive turn in a career that may now play itself out without the endorsement, the necessary garland, of a World Cup victory.

Whatever the disappointments and disenchantments that have gripped Ireland in the wake of the first-round exit of the boys in green, the misery in New Zealand will be total. And the hardest truth is that the brand leaders, the game's exemplars, are also beginning to look like a team of chokers in the tournament that matters. In a culture that has been bred on winning, that is unacceptable.

All neutrals will hope for Argentina to go all the way. The South American team have battled hard for acceptance in the past couple of decades and are still the hoboes of world rugby. The fact they literally have to wander in search of games means they have retained something of the romance of the amateur ethos, as Augustin Pichot called it.

I remember attending a Pumas training session in Kildare a few years ago and sitting talking with Pichot afterwards.

The Argentinians cooked hunks of steak on a barbecue and ate on long tables with crusty rolls and plenty of wine. At two o'clock on a wet autumn day, they were singing songs.

They lost the Test match against Ireland then, but now that they are a better side they have managed to retain that renegade spirit and they have enriched the World Cup. And surely the French fans would love a France-Argentina final to neatly bookend the competition. Not for the first time, the South Africans will be portrayed as the big, bad guys.

The Irish ambitions of keeping this kind of company look so far-fetched now as to be open to ridicule. But it should not be forgotten that this was an exceptional Irish team that lost form. Nor should the record of the current Irish management be blithely disregarded. Rugby remains a fringe sport in Ireland, played seriously in the wealthier urban centres and then loyally kept alive by amateur enthusiasts in the majority of counties dominated by Gaelic games.

There is an appetite for the game because Irish people enjoy sport. But it is delusional to think that Ireland winning three Triple Crowns in four years, or coming within the bounce of a ball of winning a grand slam, can be simply dismissed because of a dismal World Cup tournament. The time will come again when Irish rugby teams cannot come close to winning a grand slam.

As for the four World Cup semi-finalists, Argentina has a population of 39 million, France has 64 million, South Africa has 47 million and England has 50 million. In most years, those countries are going to have a better chance of fielding better teams than us. The fact is that rugby nations with small picks are not winning the World Cup - and that includes New Zealand.

For once, Ireland had a first team capable of running with the world's best. They had not the depth of those other countries and were hopelessly reliant on four or five key performers. But there was the glimmer of a chance that, if everything went right, Ireland just might do something extraordinary. Instead, nothing went right. And when that happens to any team in any sport, you end up helpless. Just ask Dan Carter or any of the All Blacks.