At the end of the Crusaders 37-24 demolition of the Brumbies at Canberra, while Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were being carried off the field on the shoulders of teammates like self-conscious princes of rugby, the television cameras panned to a poignant hand-painted spectator sign.

It said: “THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES DAN AND RICHIE. JERRY RIP”.

The fragility of life and sporting careers, what Virgil called lacrimae rerum (the tears of things), is embraced in the sign.

Jerry Collins has affected the rugby world rather like the untimely death of Philip Hughes similarly dismayed the cricket world. We think that there is a certain invulnerability matched with playing longevity with our sporting heroes. And when they are taken away from us, there is the sense of a talent unfulfilled, of a life where the rewards of great endeavours are never realised.

The Victorians, who invented mass sports, often distinguished this notion by erecting a broken column over the grave of young people who died before their life potential was fully developed.

With Philip Hughes and Jerry Collins there is a sense that they will always be forever young when we remember them, as we will to the end of our lives.

This is the feeling, too, but without the harrowing knowledge that a sporting career and a life ended with their deaths, that came over me as I watched McCaw and Carter go through, awkwardly, in that self-effacing New Zealand manner, the after-match commemorations of their years in the Crusaders colours.

McCaw won four Super Rugby titles. Carter won three. Between them played 278 matches for the Crusaders. They were the rugby geniuses who created a Crusaders brand that is famous, and rightly so, for excellence and rugby fervour around the world. No team in Super Rugby comes near the Crusaders for success in the Super Rugby tournament.

The heart of the team was built around the unflagging, relentless play of Richie McCaw, who is regarded by New Zealanders now as probably superior to the great Colin Meads as New Zealand’s greatest player.

You have to go back to the 1920s, to the legendary Bert Cooke, who averaged a try in every first class match he played, for an inside back to come close to the match-winning qualities and all-round excellent in every aspect of back play like Dan Carter, the soul of the Crusaders.

I am an ancient. I have seen all the great five-eighths since the 1950s. There is a select and golden line of them from Jackie Kyle, Mark Ella, Hugo Porta, Barry John, Stephen Larkham and Dan Carter. And the greatest of all of them, because he could do virtually everything the others could, and whole lot more on attack and defence, was Carter.

For me Carter was a sort of Thomas Jefferson of rugby five-eighths. President Kennedy once remarked to a gathering of Nobel Prize winners and artistic geniuses at a White House dinner he was hosting: “This is the greatest collection of talent gathered in the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone during his Presidency.”

Carter is probably the greatest collection of rugby talents gathered in just one player.

The other aspect of the greatness of McCaw and Carter (something that they shared with John Eales and Mark Ella) is that played the game in the right spirit, on and off the field.

McCaw was and still is subjected to more off-the-ball attacks than any other player in the game. George Smith and Phil Waugh were sent out to “get him” with or without the ball in crucial Bledisloe Cup Tests. There were the nasty shots from Quade Cooper and various other thugs over the years.

Yet I cannot recall McCaw ever retaliating. The nearest he got to this was to charge at Cooper, with intent and with the ball in his hands, to test Cooper’s courage to confront someone who was not lying vulnerable in a ruck.

McCaw, too, has been invariably generous to his opponents, in victory and more importantly in defeat. Before the Crusaders-Brumbies match, for instance, there was a great deal of media talk (wrong in my view) that David Pocock is the best number 7 in world rugby. Asked about this, McCaw was generous in his praise of Pocock.

As it happened, Pocock who did not actually deliver in the game. He got a couple of turnovers, was at the back of a couple of rolling maul tries and was penalised a couple of times for mistimed efforts to effect turnovers at the ruck.

McCaw, like all great players, let his actions speak for him. He outplayed Pocock, up to the time that the Brumbies flanker had to leave the field with a head knock.

It was a significant moment, it seemed to me, and an insight into McCaw’s ruthlessness as a player, that when the Crusaders had a chance of kicking a penalty goal and extending their lead to two converted tries, he was part of the decision to opt for a rolling maul. The Brumbies had punished the Crusaders with rolling mauls, now the Crusaders were inflicting their own punishment to the Brumbies.

Those who live by the sword, the Crusaders were saying, can die by it, too.

When he was illegally impeded (according to Jaco Peyper, the South African referee) from scoring rolling maul try, the Crusaders were awarded a penalty try which took them into the safest of leads with minutes only to play.

This ruthlessness that McCaw has demonstrated throughout his career is a characteristic of Carter’s play and ambition in his glittering career, too.

Robbie Deans tells the story of asking a young novice Carter what his goals for the season were. “To take Merhts’ position,” Carter replied. “Good answer,” Deans told him.

Justin Marshall this week told how the young Carter would sometimes chip him at training:”Remember Justin, I’ve played a bit of halfback, too.”

This essential ruthlessness was evident throughout the Crusaders-Brumbies match as the visitors exploited the inherent weaknesses of the JakeBall game the Brumbies adopted.

This season, the Brumbies have been the only side that has not scored a try from a movement starting in their own half. They invariably kick for position when they are inside their own half. The Crusaders knew this. So they played the Brumbies at their own game.

They kicked and kicked, forcing the Brumbies into their own half.

The Brumbies were only able to establish field position a handful of times, mainly through several penalties, for Nic White to kick terrific punts into the Crusaders 22, thereby creating the platform for three successful driving mauls.

But there was no other pressure put on the Crusaders defenders with any ball-in-hand running from inside their own half from the Brumbies.

This is an obvious contrast with the successful New Zealand sides, especially the Hurricanes, who lead the 2015 Super Rugby tournament in carries (125), metres gained (550), clean breaks (11) and defenders beaten (24) each match.

The Waratahs have good statistics on this area, too, and featured the fewest number of kicks in general play in a match (15) and have the second best record of defenders beaten (22).

It is difficult for the Brumbies to go to South Africa to play the Stormers. But of all the teams that have qualified to play in the finals, the Stormers are the least successful and, even playing at home, probably the easiest team for the Brumbies to have to defeat to go further in the competition.

You would have to think, though, that the Brumbies will add a lot more to their game, perhaps abandon Jakeball, once and for all time, and get speedsters like Jesse Mogg to run at the Stormers kick-and-chase defenders.

Another couple of aspects of the Brumbies-Crusaders match come to mind, as well. Stephen Larkham, who I have praised as a coach, presented a side for this crucial match that had no attacking ideas or structures in place. This is worrying. Larkham, after all, is the Wallabies attack coach. Surely, the brainless Jakeball-obsessed Brumbies backs are not a standard for the Wallabies!

All those who believed that Dan Carter and Richie McCaw are finished (hands up now, confess) will have to retract their words. McCaw, playing as he said with a smile on his face, was outstanding. He topped the tackle count with 11. He won lineouts. He linked with runners making breaks. He ran himself. And showed that anything David Pocock could do with a rolling maul, he could too.

Carter was the liquor equivalent of a vintage port. He was smooth in everything he did. There was just a bit of bite in his tackling, running and in the way he pinned the Brumbies down in their no-attack area, their own half.

The two champions, and let’s face it on this form they are going to be forces at the Rugby World Cup tournament, were part of a side that had the serious business of restoring some gloss to the tarnished image of the Crusaders franchise. They came into the match knowing that for the first time since 2001, the Crusaders were not playing in the finals.

There was a purpose and steeliness about their play which was impressive. They reminded me of Napoleon’s Old Guard at Waterloo, the battle-hardened, generally victorious soldiers who had endured with the Emperor through his triumphs and his disasters, and now gathered as the battle was being lost for one last charge to restore the glory of their reputation.

It helped the Crusaders, in fact, that Todd Blackadder finally played a side that could play the pragmatic, clinical, ruthless Crusaders style of rugby. Carter and McCaw were restored to the positions where they had made their reputations, and the reputation of the Crusaders. There was, at last, a biggish inside centre, and the tactics of running the ball involved more direct charges at the defensive line.

This business of the biggish inside centre is important. New Zealand pioneered the two five-eighths game back in the days of Bert Cooke. But the advent of Ma’a Nonu had led to a rethink of the system. A bulky inside centre, with a deft passing and kicking game, attacking the middle of the field offers all sorts of options for the attacking side.

They can move from side to side to find mis-matches. They can flood through the area the bulky inside centre has smashed through.

The second play-maker in the two five-eighths game, in New Zealand at least, has been replaced by a play-making fullback, and in the case of Conrad Smith, a smart, improving-the-ball outside centre.

The weakness of playing a smallish play-making inside centre was exposed when the Brumbies Robbie Coleman, a sharp, brave runner was almost crushed by the massive Crusaders winger Nemani Nadolo.

Why wouldn’t Larkham think creatively for the Stormers match, if Matt Toumua is not available, to play the big Tevita Kuridrani at inside centre and Coleman at outside centre?

And on the matter of thinking creatively, how did the Reds not capture Nadolo, a player who was born in Brisbane?

And why did the Waratahs (before Michael Cheika’s time) sign on Nadolo and then let him go?

It is a testament to the Crusaders system, and a portent to their continued success in Super Rugby, that Nadolo has been turned from a reject to just about one of the most valuable players in world rugby. And remember, he plays inside centre for Fiji, one of the teams, with Wales and England, in Australia’s Pool of Death in the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.

This thought brings me to the Waratahs-Reds match. Matt Carraro was brought in from the reserves to take Kurtley Beale’s position at inside centre. In my view, Carraro, a tough, direct no-nonsense runner, was an important player in the Waratahs revival in the second half when 28 points were scored to 5 by the Reds, a try by Quade Cooper.

A sign of a side that is strong in the mental aspect of the game is that they win when not playing particularly well. The Waratahs did this. Their first 40 minutes were among the worst halves of rugby they have played under the Cheika coaching regime.

They did come out with intent and were perhaps lucky that Jacques Potgeiter got away with a blatant tackle off the ball on Rob Simmons early on in the match. Potgeiter threw himself about with reckless abandon. He charged into opponents, when they had the ball and sometimes when they didn’t.

This ferocity is fine, but it can explode on a side if it is carried to excess as the Waratahs did a couple of weeks ago.

The big thing about the win over the Reds is that the Waratahs kept to their method of putting pressure on opponents through running the ball at them. This is the Waratahs method that won the Super Rugby tournament last night.

And could win it this year, too.

The Hurricanes have had an exceptional year winning 14 matches. For over a month really, all the teams in the Australian and South African conferences have been playing for the crucial position of winning their conference with more points than in the other conference.

The Waratahs have done this. They get a home semi-final. Even if they have to travel to Wellington for the grand final, it is a relatively easy journey compared with the fate of Brumbies who have to fly the Indian Ocean twice, and possibly travel to New Zealand and back to compete in a grand final.

And the Waratahs have won in Wellington already this season.

So the Crusaders era is over for the time being. Are we seeing the start of a Waratahs era?