But in the wake of that mesmerising, vibrant performance, and other more inspired sporting events of the past few days, there lies the story of heroic fall and rise; the reality of sport? Losing counts for nothing.

I have never been what you would call a 'rugger bugger', deprived by my schooling of the opportunity to uncover this sensational game until more recent years when first (hands up) the corporate hospitality gig and then more recently a contract with the RFU, gave me the chance to witness first-hand a game that defines the word manpower.

The first ventures were not great. I was lured by a Llewellyn Morgan to the land of his fathers to watch a pitiful Wales flirt briefly with the shadows of JPR, Barry John and Gareth Edwards.

Talk was of Edwards' great 'try', for the Barbarians against the All-Blacks around the time of my birth. Grandfathers reminisced, fathers remembered but few rejoiced, including those early colour heroes who seemed to will themselves nobly to obscurity for the sake of their children's children; a desire for success in modern times to erase the burden of their succession.

Later, I graduated from Cardiff to Twickenham, surely home, if there is one, to the God of War. Fortress England they called it. A mighty obelisk of concrete and Guinness, it is, for the uninitiated, fervent, drunken and riotous but never obnoxious or threatening.

For a lifelong football supporter it was all that fanaticism should be - punch ups played out on the field rarely imitated beyond the white lines. Ripped ears returned at the game's-end with an extended hand of camaraderie - warriors at eighty-minute war and at truce between. This, I told myself, this is what games are about. This is nothing if not sport.

So, for this millennium I have occasionally swapped the round ball for its oval brother and played truant at the home of rugby. Sometime observer, sometime charlatan, I have gained an understanding of a sport I fear I shall never master, nor about which I shall ever have the same passion as I do for the Saints.

But, a 'following' of England has led me to my local club, Esher, and the occasional stint in the windswept stands while the Southampton team bus toured the more obscure climes of first the Premiership and now the Football League.

With this in mind, I found myself, on return from triumphantly outscoring the Baggies, donning my best accent, opening a bottle of their finest export and shrugging my shoulders in front of ITV1 and doing what comes unnaturally to an Englishman, supporting the French.

It was then, while the mighty Chabal absorbed the Hakka and gouged the souls of the Kiwis with a look of shear insanity, that the spine-tingling began and it would not relent until finally, Les Marseillaise drowned the house in a bath of Gallic passion. Victoire! Magnifique. Trés bon!

Me, a bone-fide 'ros-bif', siding with the Bone Partes. Why? Because if you want to watch a team play rugby, you watch the French. Impact players, flair players, sinewy Michalak, like Yachvili before him, and Castaignede before him - Henry's of their game - genuine buttock-lifters. The kind of sportsman you beg to be given the ball, just so that you can curse your own inadequacy as you marvel.

And then to the Saturday just gone.

All the passion and flair of Gaul buried by a mighty England without the need for Prussian Grenadiers. A rolling, battering ram of a rugby side dismantled the French piece by piece, casting them aside on the field of Agincourt, barging shoulders, bruising egos.

Winning uglier than a pair Cinderella's sisters. Winning not on talent but on strength and will, founded on belief, glazed in Anglo-Saxon anger at the also-ran castigation.

So, now what's left for the distraught Frenchman? Memories maybe, and a chance to be crowned the world's third best rugby side? Small comfort, not even a baguette crumb.

But it's England who travel on; England who take centre stage for the final act, England whom, with the grace of their Gods, might emerge victorious if they can repel the final onslaught.

And this, St George, is the lesson. There is no right way to win, nor right way to lose, simply victory and failure, spoils and sorrow. I would pay money to watch the French play rugby, I thank my own God I don't support them. All the passion, flair and invention are worth nought in the pursuit of success if it is undone by will alone.

Let us not make Southampton the same George.