Tim Wellock combines a light-hearted riposte at the Pom-bashing Aussies with a serious look at how English rugby can use the triumph to reverse declining interest in the game.

YOU can never find an Australian when you want one. I seem to spend my summers watching their second-string cricketers dominating our county game, but they're never there when you want to gloat.

Wouldn't it be marvellous to tell them how we toyed with their rugby team? Gave them an early try to stoke their opinions that we are boring, arrogant whingers who choke when the going gets tough. Then totally outplayed them for 40 minutes before allowing them to draw level with two minutes left.

After all, just as at the Sydney Olympics, they had put on a fantastic show and deserved to have a final which went to extra time. Never mind the quality, feel the drama!

Even then we weren't satisified. We always knew we had the beating of their limp-wristed bunch of Sheilas, so we could afford to toy with them even in extra-time, going ahead then allowing them to equalise with just enough time for us to snatch it at the death.

I don't know how much we had to bribe the South African referee, but we even got him in on the act of spinning out the drama to its absolute limits, and how well he played his part in those last five minutes of normal time.

Obviously, we were trying to re-create 1966 by allowing the opposition to equalise just before full-time. From George Cohen to his nephew, Ben, it has been 37 years of hurt and it was far better to end it with the same unbearable tension than to thrash the opposition out of sight.

This was far beyond edge-of-the-seat stuff. It was leap-up-and-down, emotionally-draining, reach-for-the-bottle drama of the couldn't-script-it kind.

The World Cup had seen far too many one-sided contests and it needed a knife-edge finale, with England winning of course, to rekindle a sport in decline.

Taken in isolation, the game itself would not have converted any doubters. Spectacular incidents or moments of attacking brilliance were few, but Jonny Wilkinson's winning drop goal is guaranteed the same immortality as the Sir Geoff Hurst goal which accompanied "they think it's all over...it is now."

Jonny is a cast-iron certainty for Sports Personality of the Year, although Martin Johnson probably deserves it just as much.

Jonny is the adopted Geordie who kicks goals for kicks; Johnson is a man who, if he were a war leader, would be a certainty for a Victoria Cross.

They are nine years apart, but perhaps their peaks coincided at just the right time. Since becoming a professional after leaving school, Wilkinson has probably packed as much practice and dedication into six years as most could expect to achieve in a lifetime.

Goal-kicking good enough to win a World Cup and set him up with multi-million pound contracts is the fruit of those labours, but the shuddering tackles he puts in will surely limit his shelf-life.

Everyone's heart was in their mouth when he lay prostrate for over a minute after one of those hits on Saturday. But wild horses would not have kept him away from his destiny of kicking the winning drop goal.

At 24, he will know he can't top that. He has a big interest in American Football and could go off and try his hand at that. Or perhaps he got such a buzz out of winning the World Cup that he will want to do it again.

Jonny went to school in Hampshire, where he was taught by Steve Bates, who was then scrum half to Rob Andrew at Wasps.

Bates was in no doubt about Jonny's potential and was largely instrumental in bringing him to Newcastle when he became Andrew's No 2 with the Falcons.

Wilkinson has developed very much in Andrew's image, except that with the benefit of professionalism he has progressed much more quickly than his mentor.

Andrew has to be content with looking back on the prodigious drop goal which knocked out Australia in the 1995 World Cup. It was an even better kick than Jonny's, but it was in the quarter-final and Jonah Lomu lay ahead.

Wilkinson has apparently already told Andrew that he wants to be at Kingston Park next Saturday, if not to play for the Falcons then to support his teammates. Considering that he could swan off to the Seychelles or anywhere in the world for a holiday if he wished, this is a wonderful testimony to his dedication to the Geordie nation.

It gives all the region's rugby clubs a marvellous opportunity to project him as the role model to attract youngsters to the game.

For a game whose playing numbers are in decline, it will be a much-needed fillip. But it must not be taken lightly at either local or international level.

When the dust settles after the stupendous climax, lessons need to be learned from the World Cup. By far the most important is that countries like Tonga, Samoa and Fiji in particular need financial support to ensure that the wealth of wonderful talent they produce is reflected in the teams they put on the field.

Rather than playing for the All Blacks or Australia, or staying in England to accept better money from Zurich Premiership clubs, they should be provided with the means to help their countries become genuine World Cup contenders.

There have been too many mis-matches over the last few weeks and the only surprise was that Australia beat New Zealand in the semi-finals. Next on the list of lessons to be learned on a global scale is that if the game is to have wider appeal it needs simplifying.

The refereeing on Saturday highlighted that because there were a lot of very close calls which could have affected the outcome.

In the end it didn't matter, because it simply heightened the drama and the better team still won. But if the game is to flow as most fans would wish there needs to be a more lenient attitude to things like the slightest of knock-ons, handling on the floor when it's arguable whether the ball is out and scrummaging "offences" such as the one which gave Australia the chance to equalise just before full-time.

It showed the value of experience that Johnson, Back, Dallaglio and Hill were immense on Saturday, while the younger props made the costly errors.

Trevor Woodman's senseless early punch gave Australia the position from which they scored their try, and Phil Vickery's "infringement" presented them with the late penalty, although I still maintain that even the most bone-headed prop would not infringe in such a situation.

At a local level, the Rugby Football Union are geared up for an influx of youngsters and it's up to the clubs to support them.

It's too much to expect that winning the Rugby World Cup will bring a culture shift in British society away from the debauched slobbery promoted by football and much of the media. But some of us live in hope.