James Lawton: Ashton built on his nation's basic instinct, Laporte ignored it and paid for his folly

We will never know – and in English rugby these next few delirious days there will plainly be little disposition to imagine – what would have happened if the French coach Bernard Laporte had pulled off the liberating achievement of his Italian football counterpart Enzo Bearzot back in Spain in 1982.

However, for the good of rugby as a developing world game it is something its rulers should now be asking with some force.

Tribal battles of the kind England won so gloriously at the weekend in competitive terms may be weighed in gold, but they are unlikely to ever beguile a wider audience. Indeed, some Eton Wall games have been known to win kinder reviews than the notices posted beyond the borders of Jonny Wilkinson's homeland.

By the sharpest comparison, when Bearzot guided his team to a 3-2 victory over Brazil in arguably the most sensational World Cup game ever played, then overcame West Germany in the final, it was said that he had "released the caged bird of Italian football". By comparison Laporte seemed only to add extra bars and last Saturday night there were many in Paris, and no doubt a thousand bars and cafes in the shadow of the Pyrenees, who fervently believed that rather than now heading for a lush appointment in the sports ministry of France he should really be left in the care of Madame Guillotine.

This might seem a little peevish, given the praise that gathered around Laporte's head after victory over the All Blacks – and the extraordinary level of defiance produced by England at the Stade de France – but it does take us to the heart of a question that will again be intriguing tomorrow night when Steve McClaren's England take on Guus Hiddink's Russia in a European football Championship qualifier of great importance.

It is basic enough: what does the coach of a national team have to do, and how do you truly measure the extent of his success?

The Laporte-Bearzot equation, despite its origins in profoundly different team sports and a gap of 25 years, is fascinating because both men set out with precisely the same objectives. They wanted to find another dimension. Bearzot, conscious that behind the iron plating of the Italian game was beautiful, natural skill and imagination, sought a new emphasis which would balance better the demands of defence and attack. Laporte, having been beaten by the sheer power of England in Australia four years ago, decided he had to go in a different direction. The beauty of French rugby was pretty to see but not sustainable at the highest level of competition; it had to be girded in much greater discipline and orthodoxy and force.

Results, however, could have scarcely been more different. Bearzot reflective, pipe-smoking, was spat upon by fans, even journalists, before the Azzurri took flight in Spain. Laporte, professorial in his rimless specs and backed all the way up to presidential level, was broadly supported right to the moment of terrible failure when the beauty that has always been so explicit in French rugby had, but for the odd moments of the splintered talent of Freddie Michalak, flown away.

Meanwhile, Brian Ashton, battling for so long with an apparently ruinous inheritance from England's World Cup-winning team, was now obliged to modestly deflect questions about the possibility of his joining Sir Clive Woodward among the knights of England.

What, as a coach with a reputation founded in free flowing rugby, has he done that Laporte didn't?

Quite simply, he has returned his team to its natural instincts; he has worked on the basics of English rugby, a sturdy, great-hearted pack, ferocity at the point of breakdown, and a concentration on doing all those things most familiar to them under maximum pressure. At the Stade de France it was the difference between laughter and tears, a sense of a team and the dull-eyed acceptance that all was lost.

What seems to have by-passed Laporte is the most insistent truth of all the games we play. We all do it differently, according to our instincts and our natures. It is true that on a technical level last Saturday's game was perhaps something of an abomination at such a late stage of a World Cup, but it had a wonderful, 80-minute tension and was won by the team that ultimately refused to blink. The biggest complaint of the many neutrals in the ground was that they had seen a match perfectly framed for English purposes, but that was the triumph of Ashton and his men. The great Brazilian football teams, and the Italian one produced by Bearzot, simply refused to compete on any terms but their own. This France did not attempt to and in that failure was a weakness of this sixth World Cup of rugby.

So far only one team have been consistently true to the best of their belligerent tradition. It is the South Africans, who await England in the Stade de France on Saturday, a team so far both unbeaten and, more importantly, uncompromised.

They know who they are and what they can best do. It is a claim that could never be made on behalf of Bernard Laporte's France, not even the night the great All Blacks fell, and in all this week's celebrations there could be no greater call on England's attention. From wherever it comes, the talent of such as Fourie Du Preez and Bryan Habana has never been obliged to fly out of a cage.

Big fish must let Argentina into their small pond for the good of the game

Rugby is surely not so wide in its strength that it can fail to see the need to immediately build a monument to its sixth World Cup.

It needs to be a living one coloured in blue and white hoops. Argentina, as a matter of great urgency, need to be absorbed in the still too thin ranks of top-flight international rugby.

The reasons thus far advanced for the isolation of Argentina, the team who have given such thrilling life to what otherwise might have been some rather stagnant lulls in the action on their way to their first semi-final, are simply not good enough from a game which purports to have an eye on world expansion.

Yes, Argentina are geographically far away from the Six and Tri-Nations action, but given all the TV and sponsorship money swirling around rugby it should be possible to establish their travelling mercenaries in a European centre – possibly Madrid or Barcelona – for the duration of a Six Nations campaign.

Italy have already brought a splash of colour and distinct promise to the Championship. The Argentines are plainly much further down the road towards serious contention and have a brilliant talisman in the skilful and dashing Juan Martin Hernandez (pictured with team-mate Agustin Pichot).

By shunning such potential, rugby has portrayed itself as a game interested only in feeding the big fish in a small pool. Hopefully, though, they will now acknowledge the effect of what turned out to be something not so far from a piranha attack. The bottom line historically is that Argentina are a first-class sports nation who have won two World Cups of football and appeared in four finals. English businessmen took the football to them – rugby businessmen, and heaven knows there are enough of them, need to do the same. The encouraging signs are that it may not be too late.

Natural justice is no sort of tragedy

The furious laments of all those French, Australian and New Zealand fans with final tickets in their hands and a burning conviction that the hustling Rosbifs had wrecked their party were not particularly gracious but understandable enough. Our heroes had not lit up the sky above the City of Light for anyone but their own supporters – and those objective enough to warm to an outstanding effort of will.

Much less acceptable is the reason for the complaint of Emma Davies, a rugby fan in America who saw Setanta's coverage beamed to the Time Warner In Demand channel in New York. Its analysis apparently came from a studio in Dublin and was studded with phrases like "sports tragedy" and a "crying shame".

There is a good chance that Brian O'Driscoll and his men would have provided something more in the entertainment department if they had made it to the sharp end of the tournament. But of course they didn't. Why? Because they didn't compete hard enough. England did and the result wasn't a tragedy. It was natural justice.