Dan Carter. Photo / Getty Images

Dan Carter. Photo / Getty Images

As the jeers swirled around Cardiff's magnificent rugby temple a shiver went up the spine, in a living room a world away, and not only because the Welsh passion for this often distressingly turgid sport was giving life to our troubled national obsession.

Hand on a cold rugby heart, we are watching the finest first five-eighths who has ever played this game.

Daniel Carter may be in rugby's rickety dock for his grand slam on a Welshman, but he has moved even further into rugby lore, and rightly so.

What Carter delivered at the Millennium Stadium was what legions of rugby fans from any country would expect from their heroes, an explosive (if ultimately misjudged) effort to cut down an opposing attack at the pivotal moment in a match.

Carter's crushing hit lowered the replacement Welsh halfback Martin Roberts like a sack of coals, immediately mining years of Welsh discontent as a replay screencast repeated an instant judgment on a tackle that would have been lauded in darker ages.

Under the present rules - and good ones for safety reasons - Carter is guilty as charged by the Welsh crowd.

At the time of writing, the judicial committee had not delivered a verdict but a reasonable one would be a one-week suspension. Though would any fair judge want to see a player put out of a World Cup final for a similar marginal act? Certainly not, whether it be Carter, Richie McCaw, Jonny Wilkinson or even Bakkies Botha. In sport and elsewhere in life, it is easier to get a punishment to fit the crime in some cases than others.

What a moment, primarily because of the stirring crowd's response. Where would sport be without the raging controversies, and while Carter's halting of Roberts won't find a place in the halls of infamy alongside Maradona's Hand of God, Formula One's crash formula, or Andy Haden and Frank Oliver's double-double tuck with pike in Cardiff more than 30 years ago, it deserves a prominent spot in the foyer.

Wales were let down by the match officials, particularly a linesman who failed to award them a penalty, which could have had them better placed for an historic victory.

And the Welsh coach Warren Gatland was certainly not out of line in suggesting a yellow card was in order.

Gatland is not wrong either in claiming that reputations influence decisions. But the major problem in this case was that referee Craig Joubert was on the wrong side to get a clear view of the tackle's impact point.

Television replays from other angles told the real story.