RWC Final 2015 - New Zealand vs Australia: There is an immortal hue to these bold men in black

The individual and collective superiority of the players responsible for New Zealand's third World Cup win is astounding

Tevita Kuridrani crosses to cut the gap to four, setting up a pulsating finale (Reuters)

Should an entrepreneur with a flair for the dramatic and a reverence for tradition choose to create a rugby-themed version of Mount Rushmore in the South Alps of New Zealand, there will be no shortage of suitable candidates for immortality.

Their names will enter legend, their achievements will endure. They represent the historic virtues and modern values of the All Black team which won an unprecedented third World Cup on a memorably intense, consistently compelling evening at Twickenham.

Mythology, in which black shirts are sacred shrouds and players form a super-race which protects and projects an isolated nation’s identity, collided with reality, in the form of the mortality which afflicts all elite athletes.

Rugby in the current era is so consistently attritional, so remorselessly punishing, that it is a minor miracle so many survived for so long, to set up the final as the biggest leaving party in rugby history. Their presence was almost ethereal.

Let the statistics of the man-mountains speak for themselves, since they are unusually eloquent. Richie McCaw has won 131 Tests out of 148, Keven Mealamu 114 in 132, Dan Carter 99 from 112. Ma’a Nonu has lost only 12 Tests in 103, Conrad Smith nine in 93. Such individual and collective superiority is astounding. The All Blacks will renew themselves ruthlessly before they defend their crown in Japan in 2019, so their dominance may become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

West Indian cricket, Brazilian football and American golf have all enjoyed periods of ascendancy, but once New Zealand’s rugby players ended the anomaly of their 24-year failure to add to their win in the initial World Cup in 1987, by winning at home in 2011, they entered a different dimension.

This was supposed to be a World Cup too far for man of the match Carter, who missed New Zealand’s triumph four years ago because of injury. He played with a sniper’s detachment and will see out the twilight of his club career in France as Test rugby’s greatest points scorer.

Great players seize the day. Carter ensured the unthinkable became the unrealisable, when Australia had trimmed a seemingly decisive 18-point deficit to four. He is not a natural drop-kicker, but the eighth in his long career, improbably impudent and unerringly accurate, was followed by a nerveless penalty from just inside the Australian half.

David Pocock, left, holds off Keven Mealamu (Reuters)

He spoke of his gratitude, his pride in what he described, with impeccable understatement, as “a pretty strong group of guys”. He hailed winning back-to-back World Cups as “a dream come true” and added, with revealing simplicity, “we try to do things no other team has done before.” Ma’a Nonu, dreadlocked and devastatingly physical, will also wind down in French club rugby, the memory of his jutting run for a pivotal try just after half-time being pleasingly fresh and suitably spectacular.

Smith, the third member of the starting team to head for the lucrative arena of the Top 14, is less heralded but no less valuable. Mealamu, whose seniority was reflected in his leading of the pre-match haka, has logically little else to play for.

Most attention, correctly, was focussed on McCaw. He also has yet to confirm his immediate future, but the transition into legend accelerated significantly the moment the golden trophy found itself in the huge hands which deserve to be regarded as lethal weapons.

The night sky was filled with colour and cordite, but the pomp and circumstance felt as incongruous as the pre-match light show, set against a sky of duck-egg blue. The firebursts and fly-pasts could not hope to match the magnetism of a match played on the ragged edge.

The Style Police had no shortage of suspects, mainly England fans whose white shirts symbolised abject surrender. Their rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” early in the game was rightly booed, as the last bleat of a fallen empire. Given the hosts’ humiliation it was embarrassing, rather than endearingly defiant.

The authenticity of McCaw’s character made the fanfare and associated hysteria all the more jarring. He has the Zen of a surf dude, the practicality of a farmer and the scavenging instincts of an urchin scouring a rubbish dump. He is a product of initial adversity, searing disappointment and remarkable self-possession. He has earned his rest, and the rewards that are likely to include a knighthood. He is not one for profundity though there was eternal truth in his summary of what, despite his protestations, would be the ideal farewell. He refused to acknowledge even the merest tremor of apprehension, as a commanding lead was whittled away before being restored in euphoric manner. “We’ve been in those situations before,” he explained. “It’s a matter of not panicking. To do that in a World Cup final shows the calibre of men we’ve got.”

Watching him half an hour after the final whistle, involved in a more informal haka in front of the main stand, made sense of his refusal to confirm what most believe, that he will announce his retirement on his return home. “I still don’t want it to end,” he said. “I’m still part of this team, I’m going to enjoy today. How can you have enough of this? I don’t think you ever have enough of it. Why would you ever call it a day?”

RWC finals: A brief history

By winning, New Zealand became the first team to retain the trophy and to win the World Cup three times. Here is the full roll of honour:

1987 New Zealand 29 France 9 (Auckland)

1991 Australia 12 England 6 (London)

1995 South Africa 15 New Zealand 12 (Johannesburg)

1999 Australia 35 France 12 (Cardiff)

2003 England 20 Australia 17 (Sydney)

2007 South Africa 15 England 6 (Paris)

2011 New Zealand 8 France 7 (Auckland)

2015 New Zealand 34 Australia 17 (London)