He labelled fox-hunting "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible", and Oscar Wilde might well have been tempted to brand tonight's World Cup final as the unbearable in confrontation with the insufferable. Only, it must be stressed, if he had been subjected to the media of the two nations.

In the build-up to, and aftermath of, England's World Cup win four years ago, it was as clear, that many involved deserved everything coming to them, just as it must have been to those Scots with sufficient detachment to appreciate the understated artistry of Bobby Moore and Charlton 37 years earlier.

Martin Johnson is the most influential rugby player these islands have produced, Jonny Wilkinson was setting new standards of professionalism at the time, and the likes of Jason Robinson, Richard Hill and Phil Vickery ran him close.

As observed by my mother, though - her claims to being a sports fan extend to getting distracted briefly from helping my dad wallpaper a room to watch Ian Botham thrash Australia all round the ground at Headingley in 1981 - what makes English success so distasteful is the public response to any success.

As she observed the other day: "We've had to put up with 1966 long enough; think what it will be like if England make history by becoming the first to defend a Rugby World Cup."

Part of this reflects a wider issue for Scots, Welshmen and Northern Irishmen, of having the majority of our media controlled by people from, in sporting terms, a foreign country.

Even the misplaced sneering of the Antipodean press at the game in the northern hemisphere to which we have become accustomed over the past decade does not match, in terms of sustained volume and consistency, the arrogance that pours out of pundits and punters from England. It irks all others, yet almost certainly works to the benefit of their teams.

Ahead of their quarter-final meeting with England, John O'Neill, chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union, rammed foot into mouth - not, by any means, for the first time - when he spoke of how the whole world "hates" English teams.

As Paul Casey, the English golfer, discovered a couple of years ago, the h' word is particularly inadvisable when used in a sporting context. Casey actually sought to give it context by saying he "properly hated" Americans when facing them in the Ryder Cup, only to discover there is no such thing as context in terms of how it comes across.

In adrenaline-packed environments, use of that word is double-edged. For those deemed to be "hated" it provides motivation and the England camp is used to being regarded that way. Steve Smith, England's 1980 grand slam-winning scrum-half, once said something along the lines of: "I don't know what our ancestors did to all these people but everyone we play against seems to want to kill us."

There were further echoes of that ahead of last week's semi-final against France, with dark mutterings about how much it mattered to beat "le rosbif" the roast beef. That is something smarter English players learned to tap into some time ago.

Brian Moore, a BBC commentator these days and a qualified lawyer who is often misrepresented by the superficial since his snarling, bulldog expression could see him mistaken as a poster boy for the British National Party, used to spend most of the week before England-France matches in the early nineties winding up the opposition.

It worked every time because, while the English are comfortable with being hated, or at least very much disliked, those facing them can become overly emotional. In doing so, they often forget about the processes and structures which all coaches regard as vital to laying the platform for big match-winning performances. England's superior focus, their capacity to remain clinical in concentrating on what they are good at, gave them an edge over Australian and French sides to whom beating them perhaps mattered too much.

This week, though, they face men whose traditions take all that to a new level.

Once hated more by the majority of its own people than the rest of the world there has surely been no more controversial emblem in sporting history than the Springbok.

Their superiority complex was exemplified at the 1991 World Cup - South Africa was still banned from international sport at the time - when a Springbok supporter who infiltrated the crowd at the final to unfurl a banner reading: "You're not world champs till you've beaten the Boks."

Until Nelson Mandela pulled on a replica of Francois Pienaar's jersey as they proved him right in 1995, it was very hard for anyone outside the white South African community to wish those wearing it anything but ill. Even now when their own government is still pressing for quotas to try to create a team that more accurately reflects their society, the Boks and their supporters remain hard to love.

Unfortunately for England, that means the South Africans are less likely than the Aussies or the French to lose perspective.

While it will surely not be a repeat of the 36-0 thrashing handed out in their pool encounter it should, this week, come down to which team is better at rugby.