Rugby Union: England's sweetest triumph: Clem Thomas hails a mighty effort as a reshaped team swung low to victory

THIS contest was won from the moment that the Twickenham crowd sang their battle hymn 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' as the antidote to the All Blacks' haka, signalling their desire to infuse the England side with a sense of self-belief. In the days leading up to this match, both Geoff Cooke, the England manager, and Will Carling, the captain, had been very downbeat in their expectations, and rarely had they approached an international match with such an inferiority complex.

Spurred on by their partisan supporters, the England pack did not flag or fail and were all blood, toil, tears and sweat. Even if the Commonwealth and New Zealand last another 1,000 years, then men will say that this was one of England's finest hours.

At the end of last season, England, after losing to the Welsh and to the Irish and claiming a fortuitous victory against France, looked a team in transition, if not on the break, and the euphoria of two years ago seemed like a distant echo. Questions were being asked whether many of the England team were wearying, and past their shelf-life, and whether Carling should be returned to the ranks.

Yesterday, they gave the lie to such heresies, with Cooke standing by his conviction that the English pack must be the principal weapon in his armoury with a battering-ram back row. They repaid him with a performance of such fire that it burnt out the Black Death, whose pestilence had plagued England and Scotland for the past seven weeks.

The All Blacks foundered on the rocks of the English pack, who not only stopped them in their tracks with a tremendous tackling effort, but outdrove them in the rucks and outwitted them at the line-outs.

The English forwards were magnificent to a man; Dean Richards as always set a colossal physical example; the quiet Nigel Redman got through an immense amount of work alongside Johnson, Clarke and Rodber in the line-outs, but the forward who caught the eye and the imagination, most of all, was the mighty Victor Ubogu, who charged everywhere.

You don't often see Tuigamala knocked back in the tackle, but Ubogu did it, and more critically he was the cause, with a terrific cover tackle, of Timu putting his foot in touch when he looked like scoring the try which might have saved the day for New Zealand.

Cooke also kept faith with his captain, and again, more crucially, with Rob Andrew, whose English conformity and steadiness he prefers to the Welsh-reared nonconformity of Stuart Barnes. Andrew again had a fine match from the moment he was inch-perfect with his first two touch kicks, until his drop goal which came as a result of the ground he had made with a spectacular kick to the corner.

Not only did England's running attacks have more edge than anything the All Blacks mustered, but their first-time tackling was entirely conclusive.

The only man I met before the game who thought that England would win was the former All Black second row Andy Haden, who did not believe in the infallibility of his countrymen.

After the match, the New Zealand captain, Sean Fitzpatrick, was gracious in defeat. 'It was another learning curve for us today,' he said. 'We're still a young team. England deserve every credit, as they secured the early ball and made it difficult for us to get into the game. We created opportunities, but we didn't take them. You can't do that at international level.'

This was certainly England's day, and they have now thrown a huge spanner into the workings of the world rankings. They demonstrated that they will be a mighty force, not only in this season's Five Nations' Championship but also in the World Cup in South Africa in 1995.