KEY POINTS:
The Springboks have been crowned as rugby's world champions, deservedly so.
There is no question that they are the best team in the world right now. The real question, however, is whether being rated as the best rugby team in the world right now is anything to be
overly proud of.
What the World Cup final lacked was not only a crowning moment but any moment at all that you could even remotely describe as a jewel unless you are a penalty goal aficionado.
The original idea of awarding penalties in rugby was to discourage illegal acts but they now appear to be discouraging the playing of rugby.
This was a World Cup final, and tournament, for which you were sorely tempted to spend a bit of time on the throne.
It's been a bad year for World Cups but at least the cricket mob had the decency to turn the lights out before their sorry mess came to a conclusion.
Rugby tried to liven things up by allowing the television cameras to follow the work of the Web Ellis Trophy engraver, but this obsession with watching a man scraping metal scraped the bottom of the entertainment barrel. Which sums this World Cup up, give or take the odd exception.
Put it this way: after watching the finest rugby players on the planet duel it out for six weeks, try coming up with a list of the top 10 tries. Then try coming up with a list of the top 10 games.
All credit to South Africa, as the great All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick would no doubt say, even though the two top sides turned the finale into a well chomped pig's ear.
Worse still, England, who benefited from a soft penalty in their semifinal win over France, were done in by a terrible penalty decision from the final's referee, Alain Rolland.
Those of us who have been watching rugby since we were knee high to a plate of oranges couldn't work out the obstruction, so goodness knows what the game's new fans in places like Tibet or wherever they are supposed to be springing up from made of it.
No doubt these new rugby fans are still heavily debating the decision down at their local sled repair store.
Maybe, though, there weren't any bright-eyed and eager rugby converts watching the World Cup final. Maybe they had already gone back to ploughing their fields while eagerly awaiting the next yak racing season.
What happened at the Stade de France was pure and simple - a South African team whose coach glorified the value of defence before the tournament were dragged down to the level of the white knights of Northern Hemisphere rugby.
The really interesting thing about the English coach, Brian Ashton, is that he is a specialist backs coach. Apart from organising the backs to sit on the scrum machine, it's hard to know what else an English backs coach might get up to in his working life.
This game was so bad that it was crying out for a dramatic drop goal, that unfairly criticised and oft-used weapon of past World Cups. A drop goal holds more drama in 10 metres of flight than this final achieved in 80 minutes of crash landings.
Faced with England's undoubted courage, bulk, conservative passing game and reliance on kicks, South Africa responded with undoubted courage, bulk, a conservative passing game and a reliance on kicks.
South Africa's mop-topped youngster Francois Steyn was the only bloke who appeared to play with any joy in the heart but, don't worry, he'll learn.
Most of the worldwide audience is probably sitting dumbfounded right now, still wondering when the game is about to start.
The two most memorable moments weren't just caught on television, they were created by television.
Australian video referee Stu Dickinson was on the button, possibly, when he disallowed an English try to Mark Cueto. Waiting for Dickinson's decision provided endless high drama without a ball being kicked.
In another age, before television scrutiny, Cueto would have been awarded the try with nary a question. If World Cup finals insist on being this bad, maybe the IRB should suspend the video referee system for the final to raise the prospects of a try or two being scored.
Because when the result of the most important match on the planet is so heavily influenced by an obstruction that never was, it seems very hard to justify rubbing out the only try because a shoe lace might have flapped across the sideline.
The other memorable moment came when England's replacement back Toby Flood shoved South African fullback Percy Montgomery over a hoarding and into a television camera.
It was an extremely poor act of sportsmanship from Flood, but at least he provided a piece of action behind the tryline.
As for the highlights: South Africa has one of the finest lineouts that rugby has ever seen, and it won the day for them.
Phil Vickery was superb as a beaten captain, and there can be no more likeable two-time World Cup winner than big, humble Os du Randt.
The Ox has also set a record that, hopefully, will never be broken.
He has not only played in two winning World Cup finals, he's played in two World Cup finals in which no tries have been scored.
