Victor Matfield, one of the driving forces behind the Springboks’ success, is to take time out from South African rugby, sampling the delights of Toulon on a six-month playing contract for the ambitious French second division club. Then he will return home and set his sights on the one element of rugby’s empire that has eluded him - playing for South Africa against the British and Irish Lions.

After claiming a World Cup winner’s medal with a man-of-the-match display, it is little wonder that Matfield, 30, was beaming on Saturday night. He has won Currie Cups, he won the Super 14 with the Bulls this year, he has been part of a Springboks team who won the Tri-Nations, he has captained his country and now has his hands on the Webb Ellis Cup.

He and Bakkies Botha, his second-row colleague for province and country, shared the same view in the changing-room after Saturday’s final: given the mythical status of Lions tours in their country, they are happy to wait until 2009. They did not play in the most recent visit by the Lions to South Africa, in 1997, but they will remember that the Springboks lost that series 2-1.

Matfield played an elemental role for his team at the Stade de France on Saturday. He and his lineout colleagues were in the air early and England never looked as if they would disrupting their throw.

Expert View

South Africa looked like a team who had prepared for four years, England like a team who had prepared for four weeks

Simon Barnes

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“Victor’s understanding of the game was vital,” Jake White, the South Africa coach, said. “I knew if it came down to a test of athletic ability that they would have the advantage – Bakkies used to play in the back row as a schoolboy, Matfield’s a cricketer and quite nimble.”

Very nimble. Within the first ten minutes of the second half he had not only made a try-saving tackle on Mathew Tait, he had launched a creditable cross-kick for J-P Pietersen, while still doing his primary work at the set-piece and featuring at the heart of South Africa’s driving maul.

“Over the course of the game the lineout became a factor that England never overcame,” Martin Johnson, England’s World Cup-winning captain of 2003 and a lock himself, said. “South Africa could bank on winning their own ball and disrupting ours, so kicking for touch wasn’t a problem for them.”

Throwing it away

Lineouts won:
England 19 from 26
South Africa 13 from 13