Time stands still for no one but it made an exception for Jonny Wilkinson 10 years ago on Friday. How long did that drop goal seem to hang in the Sydney night sky, lazily spinning end over end, bound for its momentous destination? Everything was in slow motion, the stadium tableau like something out of an HM Bateman cartoon entitled: "The Man Who Pissed In The Vegemite". And then it went over and the rest of Jonny's life began.

How do you follow that? How do you cope with knowing your subsequent professional existence will be one long game of catch-up? According to Wilkinson, reflecting on his finest hour exactly a decade on, the only option is to avoid re-watching the game and to rely purely on personal recollection. "I've seen the highlights and key moments but never sat down and watched the match. I've tried to preserve the quality of the memories I have, which are wrapped up in the feel, the senses, the smell, noises and atmosphere.

"I'd rather keep it in that first-person experience, rather than watching it back which can taint the memory. I want to keep this one exactly as I remember it, which was one hell of an experience. I don't think there will be too much in the future that matches it for sheer intensity."

In hindsight that extraordinary World Cup final evening in the Olympic Stadium in 2003 was also notable for the depth of both sides' character. Wilkinson, happily relocated to the south of France, sometimes wonders if it happened to someone else. "It does genuinely feel like a lifetime ago. So much so that, to a degree, it feels like a different person was there. So much has gone on since then; it's not really been a straight line. But the preciousness of it doesn't go away. It hasn't lost any of its power or brightness because time has passed."

So what would have happened had he missed? Sir Clive Woodward reckons he would still be an intensely bitter man and that his squad would never have slept soundly again. Wilkinson, having seen Australia claw their way back and take the game into extra time, understood all this at the time. "I was thinking that because of where the guys had put me, I cannot miss … this has to go over. I almost remember feeling: 'The others drifted wide but this will go over'. I knew it would go over from fairly early on.

"What surprised me was I actually got lost in that moment. I didn't know where I was. I remember half celebrating … it felt like a surreal, dream-like situation. Then there was the realisation there was still time left. I really wasn't up for a third game-tying penalty from them before the end."

Happily for English onlookers, Trevor Woodman grasped the restart and Mike Catt deposited the ball safely into the stands. Had he been offered an underground tunnel to a private desert island the following morning Wilkinson would have taken it. "There was a private party for the guys but by that point I was spent. Everything had taken its toll. I knew that before I woke up the following morning that's as good as it would probably feel. I realised that, at 24 years old, I couldn't afford to let that be the pinnacle of my career. It would have been nice to say the pressure was off but, unfortunately, I put the pressure back on to myself."

Any sense of nirvana, as a result, was swiftly replaced by deep anxiety. "I was disturbed the next morning by how quickly the atmosphere changed at the hotel. We were having breakfast and it was quiet. Some of the guys were talking about it at breakfast but there were families there who were talking about what they were going to get up to on holiday. You realise it may be the biggest thing for you right then, but it wasn't for everyone else. After all that time and effort, I thought: 'What now? Why hasn't my life changed hugely?' My misguided approach was believing I'd wake up and things would be very different."

As it turned out it was to be 2007 before an injury-plagued Wilkinson played Test rugby again. When he says he has learned "as much from the downs I've experienced … as the great moments like that one" he speaks the self-evident truth. The story of 22 November 2003 will also always be a collective triumph of wills. "Knowing what we all went through on that journey to get where we did is probably what sits with me more than that last game."

If anniversary hoopla still disconcerts Toulon's self-effacing fly-half, it at least allows everyone else to celebrate a special team and a remarkable achievement.