There is something satisfying about a finale that is a neat microcosm of the whole season. We had just that at Twickenham. The heat may not have been entirely consistent with what we are used to, although it did remind us that our winter this year has plunged us into drought, but we had a Harlequins team playing as they have throughout a season they have dominated. We had, too, a Leicester side that had looked down and out at one stage but waxed towards the end, as they had in the regular season.
And, finally, we had in Chris Robshaw a player of the year who began his perpetual motion act here at the London Double Header at the start of September, continued it for the next nine months and was still at it, right up to the final whistle, whereupon he strolled up to collect a first Premiership trophy for a club he has played at since he was a kid. There is a kind of symmetry to it.
This feels like a breakthrough season for a man who has recently found himself captaining his country as well as his club, but it is sometimes forgotten that Robshaw was also the Premiership's player of the season in 2009. The man has been doing this for years, and it is not to the England establishment's credit that it took them until this year to extend to him due recognition.
He is proving adept at leading institutions out of darkness and into the light. He did a fine job as England captain after the lows of the World Cup, although his work there is far from over. His work is far from over with Harlequins either, he will no doubt insist, but this is now tangible reward for a club that were pariahs very soon after he collected that 2009 gong.
Harlequins and the Bloodgate scandal were inseparable terms for some time, after the club teetered on the brink of sanctions they claim could have brought them down. The severest of those sanctions were avoided, but Quins must have wondered at times whether they would ever wash away the fake blood.
They surely have done so now, and they have done it by playing their way out of the mess. Before Bloodgate, they were the darlings of English rugby, held up by many as an example of how English rugby might transition from the stuffy, elitist stereotype it laboured under during the amateur era to something more vibrant and inclusive. The blood capsules and cover-up undid much of that, but the club held their nerve, kept playing, failed to close out a few games last season, rectified it this, and now they are English champions.
Bravo, and especially to that blond guy in the middle of it all. When new champions are made, the temptation is always to herald new dawns and to leap about in excitement. So often they prove false. Quins have a way to go yet to claim the high ground that their opponents here have enjoyed in recent times – this was Leicester's eighth consecutive Premiership final, after all – but English rugby can be proud of this collection of natives, spiced up with the odd South Sea Islander.
The pace of this game was outrageous, considering the heat, and Englishmen in the famous checked shirts led the way, defying the Tigers to keep up with the game they were intent on playing.
Robshaw was at the heart of it, stepping in at fly-half time and again to release team-mates with deft little offloads. Nick Easter and Joe Marler took turns, too, as unexpected playmakers, and Danny Care buzzed around them all. Some of the passages of play were spectacular, and if England choose to base a game around some or all of these Englishmen, young and old, few will complain.
Only as the sharp end approached did they flinch, but by then they had an unassailable lead, for all Leicester's heroics in recovery. And there, with the clock itself exhausted, crouched Robshaw over the game's last ruck. Indefatigable to the last, he foraged furiously, with the Leicester tide encroaching to within a few metres of the Harlequins line. The referee found in his favour. Game over, and a club and the man at its heart had completed an emotional journey. You could say it looked satisfying.
