Take a bow: ABs greatest show on Earth

All Blacks have reinvented rugby with champagne game against biggest rivals

In the recurring dream in which I can fly, it always starts the same. I just run, and then sort of push my body weight up into the air, and keep on going. I’m aware the principal thing you need to make it work is the confidence that it will work. It always turns out to be fun and surprisingly easy, and I don’t know why other people don’t do it.

But I do know, now, that some other people can. Sevu Reece and George Bridge, for starters. What’s going to happen in the Rugby World Cup final is that Richie Mo’unga will kick crossfield to them and they’ll run, at first along the ground and then a little upwards, into the air, sailing above the opposition to wrap the ball in a loving embrace before continuing over whichever hapless wretch is trying to stop them, back to ground and onward to the tryline.

Reece will also fly while twisting and passing; Bridge will teleport himself to whichever part of the field he feels he needs to. Ardie Savea will go “give me that” every time he gets near someone with the ball, and they will do it gladly, and then, with legs like steel pistons and the wings of Mercury on his ankles, he’ll fly too.

Aaron Smith will rocket the ball halfway across the park; Beauden Barrett will do such things with speed and shimmy and step, the opponents won’t even know what they’re watching. All of them will stop attackers dead in their tracks. And when the very best of their rivals, like Cheslin Kolbe on Saturday, steam away to score their own tries, any All Black will produce a wonder tackle.

There will be, as I dared to hope after the game against Tonga two weeks ago, so much magic.

In the end it was 23-13. It doesn’t sound a lot. But it was only the score. The real outcome was All Blacks: Hallelujah. Springboks: Are you really still playing that dull old game?

Some of the proper commentators are like, that was pretty good and we can rest a bit easier now but let’s not get carried away.

Guys. The All Blacks have reinvented rugby. Not with a champagne game against a weak team, but against their biggest rival, a team that some were saying, just a day or two ago, is statistically best placed to win the whole comp. Statistics! The ABs do triple backflips on the grave of your statistics.

And they did it in the opening round of the Rugby World Cup, on a weekend when every other team let nerves get the better of them. Tierone test rugby, look out.

We should not have been surprised. Steve Hansen told us they were going to do it and his team selections promised it: Those twinkletoed double-playmakers, the triplewhammy loose forwards, the props who can carry, the angels of extravagance on the wings.

They did it even though nerves sometimes got the better of them, too. Or was it generosity that made them stand back politely, when the Springboks were pressing, and let Pieter-Steph du Toit grab the ball and charge over for a try? There you go, Pieter-Steph, let’s make the game more interesting: You can have that one. Being nice guys is all very well but it was a funny moment to remind us of it.

But if there were a few All Blacks nerves, what better way to settle them — let’s just remember it again — than to have Mo’unga cross-kicking to Reece from inside the 22, sparking a length-of-field try in which backs and forwards alike prance and charge and spin and soar their way to the line? Take that, world rugby. And that — they repeated the magic just a couple of minutes later.

By the way, did you notice all their boots were black? Astonishing it has taken this long for that to happen.

So now what? Three more games of furious, fast and fabulous rugby, that’s what. Followed by three more. Is it too soon to call it the greatest show on earth? My only regret, given the ticket I hold in the office sweepstake, is that it now looks unlikely Russia will win.