It comes to something when we're all taking a lead from The Sun. But there it was, yesterday morning, sat alongside a large picture of a blood-swathed Andy Gomarsall (and across the page from the headline 'Everyone hates England, especially the French but we don't care!'), a slim little column from their chief sports writer, Steven Howard, titled 'England and Brian Ashton: an apology'.
Tricky ground for a journalist, making apologies. For a start it smacks a little of making fresh capital out of your own errors, and it always seems a little self-satisfied, reminiscent of the smug grin on the face of a goody-two-shoes who has just grassed in the class troublemaker.
Do England deserve an apology for the amount of abuse they've endured ever since? Not necessarily - that South Africa result remains ones of the most humiliating defeats ever inflicted on an English national team. It was utterly grim, soul-destroying for all involved. The manner in which they've come back from that nadir though, has gone curiously unacknowledged by a lot of people.
Since then, they have rebuilt themselves, an act all the more impressive given that it would have been so much easier to fold. Through the course of three knock-out matches, England showed that actually, everybody else's judgments were wrong, and that all that really mattered was the feeling within the walls of their own hotel.
What was initially a slight return of confidence has burgeoned into a genuine self-belief. Sadly, it took that quarter-final win over Australia to prompt any recognition that what had seemed to be true three weeks ago, bears almost no relation to how they've played since:
"The chariot is destined for the scrapyard" - Mick Cleary in The Telegraph.
"Not a point, not a shot at goal, nothing save the final destruction of an honest but limited team whose time has now run out" - David Hands in The Times.
"England, who will mercifully soon be stripped of a world champions tag they have held in nothing but name for four long years" - Stuart Barnes in The Sunday Times.
"It is time for sweeping changes and if that means importing a coach from beyond England, then so be it. The first thing will be to find a new coach. Someone who won't surrender or compromise" - Eddie Butler in The Observer.
And yes, in case you'd thought I'd forgotten, here's my offering:
"I wrote last week that England couldn't get any worse and I meant it. That South Africa game was an insight into just how poor this side are, and how little we should expect of them. They forfeited their right to make us believe that they are worth being passionate about."
Oh yes, and you lot too: you can click here to cast yourselves back to what we were all saying three weeks ago.
The victory over Tonga - one of the genuinely outstanding sides of the group stages - was grossly undervalued. "My ultimate feeling as the Parc des Princes emptied was one of pessimism for England. If the jerry-built Tongan midfield could find so many routes through the English defence, then what might the celebrated Aussie conjurers achieve," wrote Stephen Jones in the following day's Sunday Times.
There should be an awful lot of people queuing up, not to apologise, but at least acknowledge that England have become one of the most remarkable stories of this Cup. Words of condemnation tend to be easy; bile is one of the easiest things to well up and unleash. Praise and congratulation, especially from journalists, is far harder to come by, particularly when they contradict what was written just days beforehand.
Not, you feel, that England would necessarily want it. One of my favourite moments from any of the World Cup press conferences I've seen was when, after the USA game, Brian Ashton responded to the opening request for a "brief impression of the game" by saying only "we won", and then frowning into the back of the room.
England have not been a press-friendly team, which is understandable given the general reaction they've received in the papers. You sense, to invoke one of the great cliches of modern management, that they've used the fact that they were under seige to help engender a new team spirit.
In the space of those 80 minutes against South Africa they went from being a team burdened by massive expectation, to one free of anything other than the prospect of imminent ignimony. Somehow, since then, they've rewritten their story; though some of us were slower to catch on to that fact than others.
Now, whatever happens this weekend, they'll be able to say that they did themsleves, their fans and their title as world champions proud. And as somebody at The Sun, if not among the broadsheets, clocked at the weekend, that is something for which they deserve massive credit.
