As rugby union’s World Cup got underway two months ago it was the planners’ dream scenario.

The hosts confronting world number one New Zealand in a deciding match in which rugby league product Burgess would emerge from being far from an automatic starter to do his job and help England overturn the odds in front of a capacity crowd.

As Max Boyce, the Welsh rugby songsmith, would have said, I know because I was there that it did not work out that way as the greatest ever rugby tournament’s epic final ultimately saw the All Blacks impose themselves on their antipodean neighbours.

Yet, just two weeks too late for those World Cup organisers that dream scenario did come true and, once again, I know because I was there.

The Kiwis duly performed their haka as England faced them down and then the teams tore into one another with everything at stake.

England built a lead heading into the final quarter, just as they had in their ill-fated meeting with Wales and once again had to address a ferocious late comeback, but this time, with Tom Burgess - younger brother of the much and deeply unfairly maligned Sam - having done his bit off the England bench, they held on and took the trophy.

The venue was not Twickenham, home of English rugby union, but Wigan, spiritual home of English rugby league; the trophy not the Webb Ellis Cup, named in honour of the man believed to have been first to pick up the ball and run, but the Baskerville Shield, honouring the organiser of New Zealand’s first ever rugby league tour to Britain.

The mood was different from the party atmosphere which brought a six week festival to an end in London last month, partly because we were up north – the half-time whole crowd karaoke was a joyous cheese-fest - and partly because there had been far less build-up since this was the denouement to just a couple of weeks of action, but also because of that added apprehension generated by home team involvement.

With rumours circulating that Steve McNamara - their head coach whose demeanour sometimes has a hint of Alan Partridge when all is not well - might struggle to keep his job if they lost the series having won the opening match against the team that had moved to the top of the world rankings by beating Australia earlier in the year, England showed the necessary character.

More than a few in the 13-a-side code will see a significant difference between the way they did so and the way their union counterparts blew their big opportunity against the Welsh, too. All the more so because, while the English rugby union community has been swift to scapegoat Stuart Lancaster and the rugby league product in whom he arguably placed too much faith, the reality is very different.

Lancaster’s record on exiting his job was almost exactly the same as Clive Woodward’s had been prior to the year his team, led by Martin Johnson - the commanding captain he turned to only after his preferred choice Lawrence Dallaglio had to quit the captaincy following a newspaper sting - finally won a Six Nations Championship, at the fifth time of asking and then the World Cup.

The team Lancaster fielded had, meanwhile, been good enough to get to the verge of the World Cup quarter-final and if he made a mistake with Sam Burgess it was in taking him off, not in selecting him. Jamie Roberts, the vaunted Wales and Lions centre, was to set up the match winning try, but he had done nothing of note while his opposite number was afield.

In truth England’s campaign foundered because of the blundering of a rugby union establishment stalwart in whom Lancaster, who was not blessed as Woodward had been in having outside influences force him to put a better man in charge, placed far too much trust after previous mistakes.

Perhaps haunted by those or perhaps over-excited by the memory of little Japan’s glorious win against South Africa a week earlier, Chris Robshaw – former pupil of £30,000 a year Millfield and product of establishment darlings Harlequins - turned down the chance to ask Owen Farrell, 100 per cent to that point, to kick a goal that would have taken them into the quarter-finals.

Instead rugby union’s officialdom - which otherwise did a magnificent job with their World Cup - got the reward it deserved for an attempt at bullying the rival code as England had to head north for their final meaningless match, played at the Etihad in front of people who did not really want to be there while, across Manchester, Old Trafford was bouncing as Leeds and Wigan fought out a classic Super League Grand Final.

Rugby karma was certainly at play that day in exposing the pettiness of that World Cup scheduling, but an autumn which has seen the best of both codes on show in these islands provides an opportunity to draw a line under such behaviour.

This Test series win over New Zealand apart, recent evidence has been that in both codes there is much to be done if rugby in the Northern Hemisphere is to catch up, then keep pace with what is happening in the antipodes where rugby union is a Kiwi obsession, rugby league almost similarly so in Australia and neither has the complicating factor of having to contend with the dominance of round ball football.

Cheap shots about which version of rugby is better, is harder, is more honourable, are tired and anachronistic, then. Just as the World Cup offered an opportunity for rugby union to remind us that it can provide compelling viewing, so rugby league’s Test series offered hope that European teams can outplay the best of the antipodeans if they get everything right.

Rugby has, this autumn, put on fare that is much more edifying than chewing over old chestnuts, instead inspiring warming winter dreams of even better to come.