Rugby World Cup 2019: With the unflinching Maro Itoje, England can rule the world

Bringing order where there is chaos and chaos where there is order, Itoje proved once again why he is the ticking heart of this side

Around 15 minutes into the second half of this semi-final, the camera zoomed in on Maro Itoje, getting his breath back at a lineout. The chest was heaving, the lungs gulping, but the eyes… well, the eyes were something else. They were white and round and as wide as saucers, bearing an expression that simultaneously implied total aggression and total stillness. He did not blink. And though there was still a good chunk of this match still to play, this was somehow the moment when you knew that Itoje, like most of his teammates, had entered a zone of complete focus, the cocoon of concentration and clarity for which all athletes strive, but few achieve.

Weirdly, not even the final whistle, their moment of triumph, their first ever win over New Zealand at a World Cup, one of the greatest victories in the history of English rugby union, could shake them out of it. There were few acrobatics and only the most muted of celebrations from the England players, a product not only of exhaustion but, you suspect, emptiness. When you’ve spent the last four years building towards it, preparing for it, visualising it, what do you do when it’s over?

In the Yokohama stands, meanwhile, not so much euphoria as disbelief: the sort of vacuum that occurs when the assumed laws of sporting physics have been ripped asunder. It wasn’t a shock, because England went into this game as probably the second best team in the world. But while it wasn’t inconceivable that England could win this game, few ever expected them to win it like this. With verve and flair and purpose, with original lines and dummy runners peeling in all directions like spitting particles, with lightning rugby played at a lightning pace. With their opponents not just beaten but dismantled, disrobed, picked off, picked apart, laid out flat on the turf. With barely a jitter. That, perhaps, is why it all felt so strange. For 80 surreal minutes, England were the ones playing like the All Blacks, and the All Blacks the ones playing like England.

That sense of disorientation had been carefully cultivated right from the start. When future generations come to deconstruct this match, perhaps they’ll alight on those thrilling opening 100 seconds, in between Owen Farrell’s kick-off and Manu Tuilagi’s opening try, as the key to the whole enterprise. Those 100 seconds of pure, exhilarating misdirection, as first George Ford shaped to kick off and then flung the ball to Farrell at the last second, as Elliot Daly shaped inside before burning Richie Mo’unga around the outside, as Kyle Sinckler tumbled to the turf but managed to present it to Ford at the last possible second. A more stunning start it would not have been possible to concoct.

And yet, you got the sense England had been sheathing this up their sleeves for some time. As a keen student of military strategy, Jones will know the old saw that all warfare is based on deception, and from the very first whistle England’s tactics appeared to be based on confounding New Zealand’s expectations of them at every turn. Perhaps even earlier than that. You wonder, for instance, whether it was Jones's idea to set up in a V formation to face the haka. Or to make cryptic allegations of spying earlier in the week. Perhaps it made some difference and perhaps it made none, but taken together it reinforced the idea of a team pitching for the peculiar.

Few players are better suited to this sort of gameplan than Itoje. To describe this as his greatest performance in an English shirt is to damn him with lavishly inadequate praise. Was it the best ever second-row display ever seen at a World Cup? Victor Matfield or John Eales or Martin Johnson might have something to say about that. But in attack and defence, in open play and at the set piece, in its bravery and discipline and ingenuity and skill, it belongs in the very top bracket.

Itoje brings order where there is chaos, and chaos where there is order. He does the simple things well: passes with precision, tackles with prejudice, leaps with power, gets over the gain-line. But then there’s the stuff you can’t teach. As New Zealand sought to gain a foothold in the game, Itoje was their scourge time and again: pulling off a brilliant turnover on halfway, reaching over and wrenching the ball out of a rolling maul.

Five minutes into the second half, as the ball pinged around inside the New Zealand 22, Itoje piled into a ruck, smeared his hands all over the ball and won the penalty from which England scored their second disallowed try of the game. He was a deserved man of the match, making eight carries and 12 tackles, as well as a lineout steal. But what the numbers won’t tell you is his broader impact: as the ticking heart of this England side, its devastating momentum and its steely gaze, raising standards and enforcing order, Itoje embodies the strengths of this team better than anyone else.

Or for another measure of his impact, look at his opposite numbers. Sam Whitelock was thoroughly outclassed, lucky to escape the bin for flapping at Farrell’s face, and hauled off immediately afterwards. Brodie Retallick, meanwhile, was a fraction of his imposing best, letting his discipline slip to the point where Nigel Owens had to give Kieran Read a final warning for persistent infringements. These are greats of the game, World Cup winners with almost 200 international caps between them. Itoje made them look like club brawlers.

“To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man,” Itoje said earlier this week. And both as individuals, and as a unit, this is an England team who after years of careful preparation and managed expectations, finally appear ready for the spotlight. Who finally sense that this is their time. Who finally look ready to rule the world.