Nonu's skill level is enormous and best illustrated when the All Blacks train. One of their most used drills is skills coach Mick Byrne kicking the ball low and hard at the players. They have to catch it - hard enough as Byrne is only a few metres away - and pass it pretty much in the same motion.
The art is being able to cushion the impact with strong wrists and then immediately soften them for the off-load. Only a few can do it as the drill is designed and even then it is only occasionally. Nonu ... every time, he is effortless and so precise.
It's the same when they switch to a longer passing drill. Most of them can throw a quality long ball - but Nonu's is drilled, on the button and whizzes into the right place seemingly every time.
A battering ram? Maybe Nonu is, but he's a battering ram with additional features that a player like Tuilagi may take an age to develop, if indeed he ever can. Nonu has reached this point on the back of many factors.
His innate talent is the foundation. He's so natural that it's obvious that even from a young age he'd have been working from a high base.
Hard work has contributed: Nonu has spent thousands of hours with a ball in his hands, repeating the same drills over a decade, it has become second nature to him.
And then there is the environment to which he belongs. In New Zealand players are genuinely encouraged to be creative and expressive: they are not punished for trying to make things happen. They play without fear in New Zealand, unlike England where there is a more conservative culture in place which tends to over- reward those who don't make mistakes.
Maybe Tuilagi would have made all the difference, but it's unlikely. The Englishman simply wouldn't have been able to throw the pass that Nonu did late in the game to put Julian Savea away.
As Steve Hansen said, Nonu's match-winning pass was no fluke: it's part and parcel of his and the All Blacks' game.
It's not yet, and maybe never will be, something that comes so naturally to Tuilagi and England.
