The pinch-me, I can’t-believe-it sensations coursing through English veins on Saturday night — and probably still this morning — are not merely shared by those of the Red Rose persuasion in the stands in St Denis and in the living rooms back home. No, the team themselves are struggling to come to terms with it all, too.

These — suddenly — are great days for England rugby, but astonishing days, too. In front of a media-packed room yesterday, Brian Ashton, the England head coach, was asked: “What would it feel like to be Sir Brian?” And his genuine look of astonishment said it all.

As texts and congratulation calls came peppering through after the nail-biting semi-final had been completed on Saturday night, Martin Corry received a text from his wife, Tara, saying: “I’m just off to get a bus back to the parallel universe.” As Corry himself and his great old Leicester chum, Ben Kay, sat in the changing-room, soaking up the joy of another unlikely success, they found themselves talking about triumph over adversity and the film Cool Runnings dominated the conversation.

For those who have not seen it, Cool Runnings is a Disney biopic about the Jamaica bobsleigh team who competed in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada. At those Olympics, no one thought they had a chance, they enjoyed writing them off, they sneered at them and they refused to take them seriously as contenders. Do the similarities need to be explained?

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• Hipkiss bid to force Ashton’s hand falls short

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• Robinson calls for 'one last push'

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But the film stretches the story even further: those Jamaicans started their Olympic campaign abysmally (for that, read England versus the United States and South Africa), then suddenly they turned on the style (the Australia game) and all too late (this morning), the rest of the world came to terms with the unlikeliest of propositions, that they could actually win the thing. “I never thought we’d be comparing ourselves to the Jamaica bobsleigh team,” Corry said yesterday. But the idea has taken hold and they have now put in an official request that Cool Runnings will be a team film, viewed this Friday on the eve of the final.

“Cozza and I were sitting there in disbelief over what has happened in the last few weeks,” Kay said. “No one expected us to get anywhere near and we have the done the job, that’s why we described it as Cool Runnings. The way we’d been written off, in some respects, you do start to believe some of it. But we’ve fought our way out of a corner, and now we’re 80 minutes from doing the impossible.”

Do not for a moment take any of this to suggest that this team feel they have gone far enough. They have travelled an incredible journey and though they are now prepared to admit that they, too, thought they would never get this far, there is no mistaking their determination to go the last yard on Saturday.

Indeed, there is a belief that nothing, now, is beyond them. They have not played beautiful rugby and they are unlikely to start to do so now. But they have a huge belief in their ability to defend their line and they have proven week after week that they have the mental toughness to continue doing so when the game is tight and when nerves are frayed.

That none of this seemed very likely four weeks ago after the Springboks had had them on toast hardly needs worth repeating — except that the team have achieved so much already that they are now owning up to such sentiments, too.

“Sometimes in sport,” Phil Vickery, the England captain said, “things just don’t make sense.” “Honestly, it is mind-blowing where we are now compared to four weeks ago,” Mike Catt said. “Incredible. As players even we can’t explain why, out of a corner, we’ve got this far. We’ve dug in. We’re surprised, it’s like: what is happening? It’s fate I suppose. And hopefully there’s one more surprise.”

Even Ashton suggested that his England had battled beyond his expectations. “If you’d asked me the question five weeks ago — are you going to get to the World Cup final? — I’d have had to think deep and hard before I said yes,” he said.

Some time soon we can take a step back and assess what this England team have achieved and how they have ignored all wisdom about World Cups and how to win them.

World Cups, we had been led to believe, were four-year campaigns won by meticulous planning. This England team, though, have shown scant regard for history and marched belligerently forward. As Rob Andrew, the RFU elite rugby director, said yesterday: “In that regard, they’ve rewritten the rules.” And there can be no doubting their determination to complete the job. Amazed? “More than a little,” Corry said. “Compare how we were feeling and what our expectations were after South Africa and now, it’s completely different. The Australia game was a case of: just put in a performance we’re proud of. Now, it’s: we’ve got to win this World Cup.”

Ashton has no doubts that his players can complete the journey. “You pick a squad to defend the World Cup,” he said, “and that is exactly what they’re doing. Now we’re in this position, it wouldn’t surprise me if they completed the job.” So think of the England team this coming Friday when they try to soothe their nerves and settle down to watch the Jamaica four-man bob-team (if Kay and Corry’s request is successful, and it is hard to imagine otherwise). For while triumph over adversity may be the central theme of Cool Runnings, the triumph of those Jamaicans was to reach the Olympic final. That is the triumph of England here, too, but they require a different ending.

In Calgary the Jamaican bob campaign blew up with a spectacular last-run crash. Maybe Corry and Kay just did not remember it that way.