Back when the Rugby World Cup was inaugurated, in New Zealand in 1987, it was decided that the first team to win three tournaments could keep the William Webb Ellis trophy. The Wallabies affectionately named the massive gold cup ‘Bill’ when they won it for a second time in 1999.

On Sunday when the Wallabies and All Blacks confront each other at Twickenham, therefore, the teams will be playing for glory of being rugby world champions, and to take permanent possession of Bill.

In 1987 this possibility was so remote the organisers allowed the notion to go through without giving it too much consideration.

Certainly the fact that of the eight tournaments, including 2015, seven of them would be won by the three southern hemisphere powers, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, was just not a consideration.

The thought was that England, France and Wales would win as many tournaments between them as the southern hemisphere powers.

So far, at least until the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, only England, of the northern hemisphere big powers, have won a tournament. And at the 2015 Rugby World Cup there were no teams from the Six Nations powers in the semi-finals, a first for the tournament.

With the rise of the Pumas, and the continued power of South African, Australian and New Zealand rugby, the possibility of an entrenched southern hemisphere dominance is very real.

There has been widespread applause, for instance, in the New Zealand rugby media for the Pumas’ performance against the Wallabies in their 29-15 semi-final defeat. The fact that the Pumas were brave enough to play their total rugby game in a crucial semi-final has been seen as a strong omen for another very strong Pumas challenge in Japan.

The Pumas made significantly more carries than the Wallabies. They gained more metres. And with 20 minutes to go, when they were only seven points behind, they launched a series of attacks that took all the defensive skills and systems of the Wallabies to hold them out.

Unfortunately for the Pumas, they had their three best players off the field injured when these attacks were unleashed: captain and off-loader extraordinaire Agustin Creevy, silky playmaker Juan Martin Hernandez and superb finisher Juan Imhoff.

Going into the 2015 World Cup, three rugby powers – the Wallabies, Springboks and All Blacks – had the chance of being a three-time winner of the Webb Ellis trophy. Now, with the Springboks out of the tournament, the Wallabies and All Blacks are left to make World Cup history.

The fact that the Wallabies are in this situation is a tribute to the team’s tendency, in the words of former coach John Connolly, to “punch above their weight” in the Rugby World Cup.

In the history of rugby, the two dominant powers since the 1890s have been South Africa and New Zealand. Despite this, Australia has enjoyed great success in the 1980s and throughout the professional era that began in 1996.

Admittedly the Springboks did not participate in the first two tournaments. The Wallabies, anyway, have played in three World Cup finals – 1991, 1999 and 2003 – and won the Webb Ellis trophy twice, in 1991 and 1999. Both these victories were in the United Kingdom.

The All Blacks have played in three World Cup finals, too. They have won twice in New Zealand in 1987 and 1999, and lost once in South Africa in 1995.

This is the first final, then, that the All Blacks have played in the UK.

The Wallabies have played in successive finals once, winning in 1999 and losing to England in 2003 at Sydney.

The All Blacks will match this on Sunday, after winning the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand and now creating the opportunity for themselves to be the first team to win back-to-back tournaments.

There is something, perhaps, about playing in the UK in international tournaments that inspires the Wallabies. They have not lost a match in the UK in the three World Cups held there – 1991, 1999 and 2015. In the case of 2015, of course, that record will be tested on Sunday.

It should be remembered, too, that the Wallabies won rugby’s first international tournament in England, the rugby competition at the London Olympics in 1908. It must be admitted, however, that this victory, Australia’s first gold medal for an Olympic Games team event, was achieved by playing only one match against England’s champion county side, Cornwall.

The captain of the 1908 Wallabies, Dr Herbert Moran, was a sort of earlier coaching version of Michael Cheika. He introduced the practice of having team meetings where players could provide ideas on how to improve the team’s performance.

Moran, too, was determined to inculcate a sense of cleverness and skill in players who had previously “never thought of rugby as a game of chess”. When he first proposed discussing plays and tactics with the use of a blackboard his players yelped with derision at the stupidity of the idea.

In time, the Wallabies morons were converted into the Moran Wallabies. The smart Wallabies of the Rod Macqueen and now Cheika era are the direct descendants of Dr Moran’s preference towards creating intelligent systems for playing rugby, a game that is essentially a chaotic exercise.

Dr Moran, too, lectured his players about the perils of venereal disease. Players were told that if they were infected, they could expect to be sent back to Australia on the first available boat.

You could say that Cheika’s “no dickheads” policy has its genesis in Dr Moran’s lectures on proper sexual behaviour.

When I saw the Wallabies’ brilliant opening 20 minutes against the Pumas in the semi-final, my mind went back to Dr Moran. His influence was present, as he set the precedent that when the Wallabies are dominant it is because their tactical thinking is ahead of their opponents.

Time after time, especially early on in the game when the Wallabies still had some energy in their legs and bodies, the right plays were chosen and the execution was invariably perfect.

Cheika talked about the difficulty of playing the All Blacks in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final and noted that “they know what they are doing all the time”. He could have been talking about his own Wallabies, the Cheika-mate Wallabies, as I like to call them.

You have to go back to the days of Macqueen in the late 1990s for a Wallabies side to be so smart in their thinking and their use of the correct tactic or play at a specific time in the game as Cheika’s Wallabies.

For example, the try that Adam Ashley-Cooper scored early on in the match against the Pumas from a scrum in the middle of the field, just outside the Pumas 22.

The blindside defence of the Pumas throughout the tournament had a tendency to come in, Bryan Habana-like, to cut off attacks before they got into full flow. So Bernard Foley ran the blind, in a wide arc. He had a player on his inside and another runner just off his outside shoulder.

The Pumas defence rushed towards the supporting runners. As they careered in-field, Foley spun, Stephen Larkham-like, a long, spiral pass to an unmarked Ashley-Cooper, who had stayed near the touchline.

The result was a devastating try – at least as far as the Pumas were concerned – for the Wallabies and a large lead which they needed when they ran out of energy towards the end of the game.

It was at this point in the game, with the scoreline 22-15, that another one of Cheika’s inspired coaching moves paid off.

The Wallabies drove from a lineout, near the halfway mark. David Pocock, my man of the match ahead of Ashley-Cooper, held on for seconds after referee Wayne Barnes told him to “use-it”.

During these seconds, the Wallabies crabbed further and further across the field. Finally, Nick Phipps got the ball and raced towards the blindside.

The Pumas reserve winger was sucked in and Drew Mitchell set off in an unbelievably brilliant, mazy run, moving further and further across the field in a sort of criss-cross run that opened up space for Ashley-Cooper to pull in a bouncing pass (which was not forward) and go across for his third try.

I was critical of Cheika for insisting on bringing back Matt Giteau, Drew Mitchell and Kane Douglas from European rugby especially for this Rugby World Cup. My argument was that players do not get better playing in Europe.

Watching France, Wales and Ireland get bundled out of the quarter-finals, and England not emerging from the pool rounds, gave some merit to this argument.

But, and it is a significant but, the players for those teams, unlike Giteau, Douglas and Mitchell, did not have the benefit of being tortured into fitness, mental and physical, by the arduous Cheika training regime. All three players have stated that they have never trained so hard and never been so fit. And it shows in their performances.

There was method, too, in Cheika’s madness in that Giteau and Mitchell are both natural left-foot kickers. This gives the Wallabies a massive boost when relieving pressure, as Mitchell demonstrated when he raced back to cover a Pumas kick-through and booted the ball back 40 metres using his left foot, which was required in the incident.

The gamble to use Pocock also worked. Pocock played out the match, making 13 tackles and four turnovers. More importantly, he dominated the middle of the field stopping the Pumas from getting any momentum for their inside-ball plays.

Pocock’s midfield dominance is matched by, or complemented, by Michael Hooper’s tackling and running dominance in the wider channels.

This combination completely non-plussed the All Blacks at Sydney earlier this year. They had no answer to the Pocock-Hooper double-whammy. If they are similarly non-plussed on Sunday, the Wallabies stand a grand chance of winning the Webb Ellis trophy.

It is customary for Australian commentators to claim that Pocock is now a better loose forward than Richie McCaw. This overlooks the fact that McCaw has changed his game as he has got older.

As Steve Hansen pointed out, when McCaw burst into the All Blacks, he was an out-and-out fetcher. He went into every ruck and maul digging for the ball. Now he runs more with the ball, as he did against France and the Springboks. He wins lineouts, as he did against the Springboks. And along with his occasional fetching, he has become a ferocious tackler.

Let us just say that Pocock and McCaw are both playing the loose forward role of being on the ball – forget the number on their backs – about as well as anyone has played it in the history of the game.

I think that one of the main concerns for the Wallabies on Sunday will centre around their scrum. They desperately need Scott Sio back, despite the fact that he had his problems against Scotland.

But these difficulties were nothing compared with James Slipper’s problems against the Pumas front row. Referee Wayne Barnes wasn’t buying any of the Wallabies’ complaints about the Pumas’ binding, boring-in and collapsing. Slipper seems to have taken the Wallabies back to the days when their scrum created the call of the Wobbly Wallabies.

This is a worry for the Wallabies. Nigel Owens is rather like Barnes in his approach. He doesn’t like resets. If he suspects a weaker scrum is foxing, he goes for the penalty. The All Blacks scrum isn’t the strongest part of its game, but it is competent and smart. It handled the Pumas scrum better than the Wallabies did.

The other area of concern for the Wallabies is their lineout. The All Blacks virtually won their tense battle against the Springboks by dominating their lineout, even when the master, the very old master admittedly, Victor Matfield came on. Again, if the Wallabies struggle in the set pieces against the All Blacks, it will be game over for them on Sunday.

The New Zealand Herald‘s Gregor Paul said that the Wallabies “don’t look great when they are put under pressure”.

“Their kicking game was poor [against the Pumas], their lineout all over the place and they just couldn’t get the ball. There’s every reason for the All Blacks to see there are ample weaknesses for them to exploit.”

Perhaps. But I would note that when the All Blacks played the Pumas in their first match of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the Pumas led at half-time and it was only in the last 20 minutes that the All Blacks took control of the match.

The Wallabies, on the other hand, were comfortably in the lead early on against the Pumas.

Both the All Blacks (13-6 against) and the Wallabies (12-6 against) were severely punished in the penalty count in their semi-finals. The team that does not incur the displeasure of Owens will be at a terrific advantage.

Hansen has already tried to get the initiative on this by clarifying with World Rugby officials the reason why Kieran Read was penalised contesting the mauls in a way judged illegal but, as far as Hansen is concerned, in a legal manner.

The main issue regarding the outcome of the match, in my view, is whether the Wallabies have sufficient reserves of energy to play out another very hard match.

Was it significant that the Wallabies tired badly towards the end of their semi-final against the Pumas, while the All Blacks surged ahead of the Springboks in the final 40 minutes of their match?