IN LONDON they brought the traffic to a halt. At least 1,000 cheering, singing South African fans spilt out of one bar alone in Fulham, waving flags and dancing in the road.

According to some estimates, there are hundred of thousands of South Africans in Britain, and last night their multicoloured flag took over the streets in the southwest of the capital as they celebrated their team’s crowning last night as the best rugby players in the world.

Charisse Houghton, 23, from Putney, southwest London, was one of those packing the Zulu Bar in Fulham High Street, one of many bars hosting South African parties. She said after the final whistle: “The result is fantastic. It’s been an awesome match. England played well, and Jonny Wilkinson performed okay, but South Africa played really well. Tonight I feel really proud to be a South African.”

In Paris, meanwhile, their country’s president, Thabo Mbeki, president of the “rainbow nation”, was hoisted aloft by players celebrating their victory at the Stade de France. In the stadium with him had been Princes William and Harry and Gordon Brown.

An estimated 60,000 England fans had battled to get to the French capital, where police said some 18,000 watched the game on a giant screen on the Champ de Mars, once a parade ground for Napoleon’s cavalry. They bellowed out God Save the Queen at the start of the match, but at the end there was only disappointment.

In keeping with the good-natured, festive spirit of the tournament, there was no violence, no abuse of the referee, no blaming players or taking it out on opposing fans.

Mark Alcock, 44, a self-employed builder from Horsham, West Sussex, summed up the attitude. “England played well. They have done us proud because they were written off at the beginning,” he said. “Now I’m going to go for a few beers and just enjoy the evening. I’m not sad — it’s been a good two days.”

His friend Mark Jones, 18, from Redhill, in Surrey, chipped in: “Second-best team in the world — that’s not bad.” A group of French youngsters walking past were heard chanting: “Allez les rosbifs.”

There was hardly any police presence, with the Paris authorities apparently assuming that English and South African rugby fans were far less of a threat to public order than the teenaged Frenchmen from the poor Paris suburbs who thronged the area for France’s semi-final defeat last week.

In a concession to local fashion, one group of teenage English fans wore red berets at a jaunty angle. Abi Aston, 26, a physiotherapist from London, was one of many English fans who defeated a transport strike by commandeering rental bicycles offered by the City Hall.

Gaby Barrett, 40, director of a recruitment company, who had to have her Land Rover rescued by the AA to get to Paris, praised the English: “They are being valiant warriors. They’re tenacious and gritty.”

At the end, the previously boisterous crowd in front of the giant screen gave hardly a whimper when the final whistle blew: only a few isolated whoops from South African fans broke the sad silence.

Rebecca Nomvula, 14, born in Paris to South African parents, spent much of the game shouting: “Viva Mandela!” and waving the South African flag whenever her team scored a point.

Her mother, Mafuna, 36, whose father was exiled from South Africa as a member of Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness movement, saw the victory as a political one.

“This means South Africa is part of the world, no longer separate from it,” she said. “I hope that now the French will no longer ask where my country is in Africa.”

All across England, wedding celebrations were interrupted, dinner parties abandoned and best-laid plans sent awry as millions watched the rugby.

Ten thousand fans gathered inside and outside the O2 arena, formerly the Millennium Dome, in Greenwich, southeast London, to watch the game on two giant screens, almost double the number of fans who watched England’s semi-final win over France.

As well as the 5,000 inside, a further 4,000 watched on a second screen outside the Dome, while a further 1,000 were left stranded outside the barriers.

They had travelled from Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire and all over the southeast to experience the atmosphere at the biggest screening of the game outside Paris.

At Kingston Park, home ground of Newcastle Falcons, Jonny Wilkinson’s team, fans stood and applauded the defeated team off the pitch. Seth Ridley, 33, a businessman from Heaton, Newcastle, summed up the mood when he said: “It’s heartbreaking. South Africa played a very, very professional game and had it won from the start . . . Hats off.”

One lucky gambler scooped a record-breaking £750,000, having placed £150,000 on South Africa at 5/1 before the tournament kicked off.

Late last night, columns of English fans trailed through the streets of Paris, heading dejectedly for the watering holes of the Champs Elysées and the Left Bank, where they finally found a welcome.

Additional reporting: Roger Waite