Four minutes to go in the World Cup quarter-final and, a former Howe of Fife player having scored a vital try against them, Australia were facing a shock World Cup exit.

What happened next has gone down in the folklore of Australian rugby and has been cited by Clive Woodward, England’s World Cup winning manager, as the perfect example of his T-CUP (Thinking Correctly Under Pressure) philosophy, which is often mistakenly defined as “thinking clearly under pressure.”

Their Celtic opponents made mistakes that gave them the chance to clinch the victory and their stand-off and play-maker duly took it.

To say that the way they took it set them up to go on to beat the All Blacks and become world champions is fact rather than hypothesis because the match in question took place not a fortnight ago but 24 years ago.

Those Wallabies of 1991, shocked into action not by then two-year-old Peter Horne and his unborn future midfield partner Mark Bennett, but by a try from Ireland flanker Gordon Hamilton who, like Horne, had played for the Cupar club before moving into the elite game, met the All Blacks in a semi-final a week after Michael Lynagh hauled them out of the mire and went on to beat England in the final.

It is not lifting the Webb Ellis Trophy that Lynagh remembers as the greatest highlight of his career, however. Instead he is most proud of the way, having taken over the captain with his half-back partner Nick Farr-Jones having been replaced, he and his team-mates handled the situation after going behind so late in that match and he was particularly pleased that it was singled out by Woodward as such a shining example of what he believes in.

The parallels with this year’s tournament are obvious, then, right down to the All Blacks being the defending champions and for all that rugby and its players have changed almost beyond recognition since those amateur times, the current Wallabies can take inspiration from the achievements of their predecessors.

Stephen Larkham, who wore the gold No.10 jersey when Australia won the tournament a second time in 1999 and is now on their coaching staff, reckons the current team is better than the one he played with.

It is impossible to draw serious comparison, any more than it is to say whether they were better individually or collectively than Lynagh’s 1991 World Cup team or, indeed, the one which became the first ever to complete a ‘Grand Slam’ of wins over the Home Unions seven years before that.

However, for all that they are underdogs in this final they have, as the Wallabies always seem to do with their extremely limited resources as very much a minority sport in their country, timed their run to the World Cup perfectly.

In terms of their own efforts, rather than anything further back in history, they can draw upon having won the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship this season, beating the All Blacks on the way, while even in the course of this tournament there was a moment when the gap in the betting between them and the favourites closed to being virtually non-existent when they took England apart in the pool match which ended the hosts’ interest.

Furthermore unlike New Zealand, who trailed Argentina at half-time in their pool match, they did not concede a try to what is surely the best ever Pumas side last weekend, while New Zealand failed, for the first time ever, to pick up a try bonus point in a pool match that day, whereas the Wallabies scored four against them.

More than anything, though, they have that knowledge that having been challenged week after week in the course of this competition – and it is rare for a tournament winning side not to have at least one close call as a result of an off day – they have repeatedly managed to think both clearly and correctly when the big moments have come in matches.