The percussive sound of pompous theories being pricked accompanied France's team bus to Cardiff yesterday. All those pre-prepared essays on Southern Hemisphere invincibility, French disunity and worldwide unease about rugby's baffling law book lay scattered on the hard shoulder beside a New Zealand team still not quite sure what hit them. Back at Twickenham bits of Kiwi jawbone were still being picked off the floor.
For France's stunning win over the All Blacks was the sporting equivalent of the Titanic getting the better of the iceberg, the sledgehammer losing to the nut. For a World Cup in danger of toppling off its narrow ridge on the cliff-face of international affairs, it was almost too good to be true. When Bill McLaren describes Sunday's spectacular as the greatest game of rugby he has ever seen, there can be simply no doubting France's achievement.
The burning question since has been, "How did they do that?" How did a side with an awful recent track record, simmering internal discontent and, according to a distinguished former international like Thierry Lacroix, no previous discernible gameplan, leave All Black coach John Hart clutching for words at the post-match press conference like a drowning man in a duck-pond? To give the intelligent, perceptive Hart his due, no coach on earth would have done better in the circumstances. His glazed features said it all.
Listening to the French post-mortems, it was the All Blacks' expressions as they trotted out for the second half which convinced Les Bleus they had a chance, according to their eventual match-winner Christophe Lamaison.
"The look in their eyes was different than it had been during the haka," revealed the out-half who, as a former swimming-pool attendant, can recognise rising panic when he sees it.
Thus, even after Jonah Lomu's second try had put them 24-10 down, French belief still blazed. In the immediate pre-match moments, Olivier Magne and Richard Dourthe had turned their back on the haka and the entire team huddled together to sing their own battle cry. "The Marseillaise is our haka," smiled Lamaison.
His captain Raphael Ibanez was equally lyrical. "Some soldiers sing before they go to war and we thought we'd sing the Marseillaise. It filled us with strength and courage for the battle."
There was more to Sunday's result, though, than high notes and rousing calls to arms. The gung-ho French managed to achieve what England and Scotland failed to do consistently, forcing the All Blacks to turn and tackle, isolating their back three and pressing the callow New Zealand pack on to the back foot.
As All Black captain Taine Randell admitted afterwards: "We didn't organise ourselves very well. The French really got stuck into the rucks and mauls and when they came at us there were gaps which they exploited."
The best-drilled team on the planet admitting to alarming gaps is like a dentist confessing he never uses toothpaste. Defeat to South Africa in Thursday's third-place play-off will prompt deafening calls for emergency Hart surgery.
The New Zealand coach may be backing the Wallabies in Saturday's final, yet the Australians will already be re-examining the tape of the French semi-final with concern. Magne would have blasted holes in any side on the day but was that the same Fabien Galthie who used to look the most ponderous scrum-half in world rugby?
As for Christophe Dominici, the jinking sprinter from Stade Francais, can small really still be beautiful out wide where the big boys now roam? Those who insist the French cannot possibly reproduce their Twickenham masterpiece should also heed the words of their number eight Christophe Juillet. "If it's dry and sunny in Cardiff, nobody will stop us," he suggested.
Indeed, Juillet may get half his wish - a dry stadium but not a sunny one - as the organisers came under increasing pressure yesterday to stage the World Cup final with the Millennium Stadium's sliding roof closed. The Wallabies have made an official request, saying that the sport's showpiece occasion should not be at the mercy of the Welsh weather.
The Australian management are fully behind their captain John Eales, who has said "it would be great" if the roof were shut and the South African referee Andre Watson is also agreeable.
"If both sides want it, that's what I'll go for," the official said yesterday, after learning of his appointment to referee the final. "I'm a team man and the players come first. I won't put a spanner in the works. You can't do it in a tournament like the Six Nations but in a one-off like this, why not? If it helps the game, fine."
It rained in Cardiff yesterday but RWC remains cautious and is unlikely to make a decision either way until Thursday when New Zealand play South Africa in the third-place play-off.
"If the two teams request it, then the Rugby World Cup will consider it," said a tournament spokesman. "The only thing that concerns RWC is that rugby is essentially an outdoor game, but at this moment no one is taking a hardline view."
Eales wants the roof shut all this week to protect the pitch, parts of which have already had to be relaid twice since the opening ceremony a month ago. The Welsh Rugby Union, anxious to nurture the green, green grass of home, could certainly do without the playing surface being badly scarred during the play-off game.
Watson's touch judges for the final will be England's Ed Morrison, who refereed the 1995 final, and Paddy O'Brien of New Zealand.
