The 2003 tournament in Australia was a World Cup that offered indelible images, particularly for English fans. There was Jonny Wilkinson's match-winning drop-goal and Martin Johnson brandishing the trophy. Australian premier John Howard presented the medals with a rapidity which some attributed to the ill-grace of a bad loser, but which he blamed on the pressures of TV scheduling.
Australia could feel disappointed by the outcome. Every previous World Cup had been won by either the host or the Wallabies, so they had every reason for expectation.
They were terrific hosts, not least in encouraging home fans to back the lesser nations. Townsville, one of the few Australian settlements bombed during World War Two, nevertheless adopted Japan so completely that Fiji - population less than one per cent of Japan's - were cast in the unfamiliar role of unpopular overdog at the wonderfully named Dairy Farmers Stadium.
And it wasn't only communities getting a rare sighting of international sport which responded. Few cities see more than Sydney, which had also hosted an Olympics only three years before. Yet the clash of Georgia and Uruguay at Aussie Stadium, in the shadow of the venerable Sydney Cricket Ground, attracted a healthy crowd and noise levels which would not have disgraced Wallabies v All Blacks.
Tonga provoked some of the loudest roars heard at Brisbane before their match against the All Blacks. And they won the pre-match contest as the two teams advanced on each other in challenge, the Sipi Tau looking considerably scarier than the haka. New Zealand won the match 91-7.
Tonga went home unhappy, complaining of second-class treatment. Canada's Mark Lawson, typifying their tradition of smart, dryly humorous skippers, was puzzled by Tongan complaints about the accommodation: "I'm a student and I live in a basement bedsit. This is heaven by comparison."
But the islanders had a definite point about the systematically biased scheduling. Developing nations invariably had less recovery time than their opponents before meetings with the 'Foundation Eight'.
More rest may have helped Wales squeeze past the Tongans before they suddenly burst into vividly unexpected life. They frightened first the All Blacks and then England with a running game centred on Shane Williams, only picked for the squad because he also offered a handy extra option at scrum-half. Wales could have won both, but lost - perhaps because, like me, they did not quite believe it themselves.
Ireland went out on the same day as Wales, their post-match press conference featuring two rarities - a media standing ovation for the retiring Keith Wood and questions flowing from the front to the back of the room as the men on the platform sought news of the progress of Wales v England, visible from the back on the big screen at Docklands Stadium, Melbourne. Ireland had barely scraped past Argentina in the pool stage, but gave Australia a serious score at Melbourne after Brian O'Driscoll appeared to find a hole in the space-time continuum, evading three closely-packed tacklers to score in the corner.
Australia had beaten Namibia 142-0, a score perfectly fitted to the cricket scoreboard at the Adelaide Oval, but were largely unconvincing until the tournament changed direction at the semi-final stage. As it rained hard in Sydney, the Wallabies won the battle of collisions against the previously lethal All Blacks and Jonny Wilkinson kicked the French, who had looked unstoppable, into submission.
Much was made, in a week before the final during which the Australian and English ends of Rupert Murdoch's empire made gleeful use of the time difference by swapping insults across the globe, of England's proficiency in the rain.
This was undoubtedly a useful attribute given that Sydney gets twice as much rain as London, its driest month little different from London's wettest. And England did indeed win both semi-final and final playing a tight back-to-basics game ideal for the conditions. But where that would once have been their only option, England's opponents had to reckon with the far greater range and flexibility developed under Woodward.
There was a clenched tension about them in the week before the final, reflecting the realities of their position. Not only was the coming contest career-defining, but not winning would, uniquely for a European team at a World Cup, have represented underachievement. With that fateful brandishing of his boot, Wilkinson instead kicked them into immortality.