Whatever happens between now and the final whistle on Saturday night, this has been a magnificent tournament for the club game, an unambiguous two-fingered salute to those who denigrate it, and not just its southern hemisphere critics who fear its financial reach.

That France, England and Argentina reached the final four is testimony to the brutal reality of the game; it is a tough, fast and uncompromising sport.

Nobody has successfully summed up the vast importance of the roughhouse world of club rugby better than the Leicester-bound Marcelo Loffreda.

“The club game? It has been hugely important, it has given players experience of pressure, it has matured them, and it has made them much tougher mentally,” Loffreda says. “The number of players performing in Europe is the difference between 2003 and 2007 - it is the key to this team.”

Argentina even play like a club team with their tight-knit brotherhood. This is light years away from the broad-ranging manufactured Super 14 regions.

It is not just that Agustin Pichot, Juan Martin Hernandez, Rodrigo Roncero and Ignacio Corleto know how to win in front of 80,000 passionate rugby supporters at the Stade de France; crucially, they also know all too well about the horrors of defeat. Loffreda has little experience of the club world but he does possess an innate feel for the continuity that is required for success. There is little doubt that Leicester have made the coaching signing of the English season.

New Zealanders only have this ferocious weight of expectation every four years, as do South Africa and Australia to a slightly lesser extent. Elite club men feel the burden, and suffer the reality of loss, far more often. It is the memory of it that is making the men in this World Cup.

The international-obsessed All Blacks have been the only team to reach for the stars and beyond during the past four years, but where did it get them? Like the Wallabies, they have been brought crashing down.

If a world XV was to be selected between these sides it is plausible that up to 10 members would come from the beaten antipodes - if the sole criterion for selection was sheer natural talent. The nature of Super 14 and the TriNations competitions lends itself to developing the creative forces which dazzle and delight.

As the World Cup is the start and end for New Zealand rugby, all other games pale in comparison; it is easy to strut the sort of talent New Zealand possesses when the pressure barely exists. But when it came to the crunch against France in Cardiff, all the talent in the world came down to a big fat zero as panic ensued.

The plot went according to another plan. France did not lie down and New Zealand failed to take their first 20 minutes to the next level which would have been beyond France. Instead, it became a high-pressure fight and the men in black simply faded to grey. They did not know what to do simply because they don’t play these sorts of games any more.

The same thing applies to Australia; the Wallabies lacked anybody with the week-in week-out experience of Mark Regan. As a physical talent, no self-respecting Australian would look twice at the ageing man of Bristol, but the hooker has been in scraps for survival with Leeds, and he has fought tooth and nail for Bristol to achieve a small miracle and make the top four. He has played with teams that could not live with the likes of the Crusaders or the Waratahs but he, unlike his more gifted opponents, knows how and when to snarl.

Club rugby is a breeding ground for winners of rugby matches rather than beauty contests. It was a fact that was acknowledged by Sir Clive Woodward after the last World Cup final but that canard had to be hidden in the pantry as inadequate coaching and selection sent England backwards. Somebody had to take the heat and it was the clubs. It was the same in France where Bernard Laporte aimed the blame whenever France went wayward.

Yet it has been the rare and priceless away victories over the years for teams such as Toulouse in the thunderously disrespectful heartlands of Bourgoin that have steeled France for the tackling heroics of last weekend. Give up in Bourgoin and you are gone and the local community let you know. Give up for the Highlanders against the Chiefs and you will be playing your provincial rugby a few hundred miles away in a matter of weeks.

They care about their rugby in New Zealand but only truly madly deeply about the brand that is the All Blacks. What Kiwi supporters fail to understand is that the intense and claustrophobic pressure of the town team is the pressure that hones an individual into a winner rather than a poseur.

In contrast to the regularity of the highs and lows of club men, the southern hemisphere elite suffer from too little imagination of loss. When the threat becomes clear the regular response is blundering indecision. Better players become worse ones because of this shortcoming.

Can the All Blacks drop a goal to win a game? No, but an average Premiership fly-half could. Such is the unromantic superiority of club rugby.

Stuart Barnes won 10 caps for England between 1984 and 1993