I got one hour’s sleep on Saturday night and yesterday I felt again as if I had a rotten hangover.

Late-night games are always like that for me: you get back late, you see family and friends, then you eat and then I like to go for a stroll, just to tire myself out to help me to sleep. When I did go to bed, I slept for about an hour but these grazes on my knees were burning and I couldn’t have the bedsheets touching me, and I had a pain in my stomach and my back.

And my mind won’t stop racing. What’s this week going to be like? What was last week like? What could I have done better in the game? I’m just wired. It’s undoubtedly about the adrenalin you’ve cooked up through the previous day. I wonder if there is a medical reason for it, the toxins of anxiety and nerves, because the next day I feel hungover, regardless of how I sleep. I just wake up feeling sick. I lie in bed just feeling ill, sick in the stomach, my head aching.

So at 5.30 yesterday morning, I realised it was a losing battle and went downstairs and sat in the team room with my DVD player and a guitar, messing around, a bit of Arctic Monkeys mainly.

At about 6.30, the door opened and Lewis Moody strolled in. Exactly the same deal. It made me laugh to see Lewis because at dinner the night before, he had said that he struggles to sleep, too, and his wife said that he always ends up going for a walk at about five o’clock.

So there we were talking about how we feel after a game. Because after a game like that semi-final, you want to hold on to the feeling, you want to stay in the moment but, all too soon, you have to move on because the next game is coming. Maybe the only time you get to keep that feeling is after a successful final — but after the last final, I was just desperate to get back and carry on playing. I guess I was my own worst enemy then.

That hangover. Maybe it is the kicking that contributes. Standing over that penalty with five minutes to go: that was nerve-racking. You can feel and see your shirt moving with your heartbeat. As much as people might think that that’s your job and you don’t look nervous, I tell you: it isn’t like that.

Yes, of course you are thinking: this could put us in the lead. Or: If I miss this, I’ve stuffed up big-style. The suggestion that you might not think that is a joke. And you are hearing all the noise, at every stage, setting the ball, going to the end of your run-up, finding your line, still you hear the noise.

It was brilliant to put us farther ahead with the dropped goal, but that’s different: you are on the move so there’s less time for nerves and, believe me, that is a blessing.

So my mind wanders back to Mike Catt and what he said to me in the dressing-room before the game. “This is Jonny Wilkinson time,” I think were his words.

I have a very good understanding with Catty, often we don’t need too many words. When he said that to me, I knew exactly what he meant: that there are a few key things about semi-final and later-stage rugby, that it was going to be a tight game and it was going to have to be finished properly. He was saying: that’s your accountability and responsibility, to ensure that we are the team with a couple more points than them.

So I am proud that we did it and pleased to have done my job. But I’ve said this before: I am so proud of the entire squad. I remember, before we left, I was asked: “Do you think you can do well in this tournament?” I gave a few reasons why I belived we could. And the comeback was: “Are you not being a bit unrealistic?” That is the sort of thing we have had to deal with for a long time.

So I’m proud that we have all dug in our heels and dragged that belief right out of ourselves. Even if it has left me feeling a little sick.

Why I refused to kick an unofficial ball

The last thing I want to say about the balls . . . You may have noticed that I tossed away a ball before my penalty just after half-time. It didn’t have a number on it so it wasn’t one of the match balls and I wanted to kick a match ball.

I remember an England game way back; I started the game and for the dropped-kick restart, the ball I was given was an older version of the match ball and it was pumped up too hard and would not bounce on the drop. Being very young at the time, I just got on with it. Sure enough, the restart didn’t go very well. When I described that to Clive Woodward, he blank-face looked at me and said: “Why on earth didn’t you just chuck it off the field?” That’s when I thought: yes, that’s important because it’s my right as a player.

Mentally I don’t particularly want to have to be dealing with that. But I will if I have to. When it happened on Saturday, it didn’t seem to affect me.

I hope not to have to talk about the ball this week, but if I have been practising with the match balls and I am kicking a penalty in a World Cup semi-final, it seems sensible that a match ball is the one that I kick.