Rugby is meant to be a game for all shapes and sizes. It is an expression that can become meaningless through sheer repetition, can be diminished because people have actually forgotten what it means, and what it signifies for the game.

Andrew Sheridan, England’s player of the World Cup, just above the magnificent Jason Robinson and Simon Shaw, is both a shape and a size.

He even managed to be inspirational at the end last night, hammering through a South African fringe defence proven to be the finest in the world, desperately trying to drag England onto the front foot in the closing stages, as indomitable as ever.

England’s revival in this tournament stemmed from their refusal to fall for the old, hoary, bitter, jealous New Zealand and Australian con that derides their reliance on power rugby as a form of advancement. Almost since the last World Cup final was played, without many tries, England have been fretting on the con, babbling about the need to expand their game, and it was only when Brian Ashton restored the old legacies that England prospered. Clearly, they would have had too much power for New Zealand, and any other opposition they met out here, with the exception of South Africa and the possible exception of Argentina.

And it was Sheridan who typified it, Sheridan who overcame all his opponents, whether or not they tried to fudge the issue with cheating. It is Sheridan who will return to Sale Sharks a global rugby hero, and it is Sheridan, provided he is treated with the same sympathy as Ashton has shown, who should still be around to spearhead England in 2011, in a land that is clearly, by its over reaction to him and what he stands for, terrified of him.

But he also has a greater significance, in this matter of shapes and sizes. Basketball teams tend to field players of the same shape and size. So do rugby league teams, and if you take out Peter Crouch, so do football teams.

Unless rugby’s administrators make a complete and shocking mess of any law changes (and do not put it beyond them) rugby’s shape and sizes ethos will continue.

Back to Big Sheri. We all know that our children love their heroes, and no doubt our more slightly built children loved Mathew Tait; perhaps our black kids fastened on to Paul Sackey, perhaps our youngsters wishing to near perfection have Jonny Wilkinson plastered all over their bedroom walls.

I have a feeling, that the formidable physique of Andrew Sheridan will, at least metaphorically, be up on the walls in the next months and years – or at least will be in the hearts of our big kids, even our overweight kids, even the kids who are nearly obese and perhaps bullied and lacking in self-esteem and lacking a role.

Not for a moment am I suggesting that Sheridan was ever obese or anything other than a magnificent athlete. He can only have been bullied at school by bullies of quite incredible courage or speed. But he has shown that there is a role for giants, and for outsized people.

Rugby is a physical clatter and a physical contest, and unless you are a genius such as Jason Robinson, then these days you have to be sizeable to massive to play it.

So back to the oversized, and the overweight. I am positive that Sheridan can inspire people to play up front, to play in positions which may not convey glamour by comparison with the likes of Wilkinson and Bryan Habana.

Yet there is a vast satisfaction and self-respect to be had from facing the physical challenges and, while you are learning on your way up, accepting the physical pastings that come your way. Rugby’s forward phases are a path to self-respect and England’s approach will win favour and friends because of that. Rugby is different. Rugby is power. Rugby can be salvation.

Naturally, to bid fond farewell to Robinson takes you completely to the other edge of the shapes and sizes debate, although, in some ways, the possibility of salvation is again illustrated as Robinson has so clearly expressed. The young and uncontrollable tearaway reformed himself under the disciplines and ethos of rugby, so much so that he is a shining beacon for English sport and for rugby of both codes in particular.

When he departed yesterday, it signified more than the end of most of England’s attacking aspirations. It signalled the end of the Robinson era, quite the most thrilling, edge of the seat, manic, where-on-earth-is-he-going-next jamboree imaginable. He also showed the professionalism to perform all of rugby’s skills to an incredibly high standard.

It has been easy to be proud of England in the knockout stages of this World Cup, and even more easy to be proud of the example set by both their biggest and their smallest players. One is leaving, the other will continue to terrorise, and to galvanise.