Maro Itoje cooling off at Coogee beach, Sydney, on the England tour of Australia in 2016. He was still a teenager when he was picked out as a likely future captain and has helped win two Six Nations titles

From the start of his glorious rugby career, England forward Maro Itoje has been described in many ways.

He is Super Maro, the “chosen one” of English rugby, a one-man wrecking ball, Old Harrovian and liberal feminist, not to mention slightly embarrassed poet.

To all these must be added today: clairvoyant. He not only saw England’s scintillating victory over the All Blacks coming, he described it the day before the game. “This weekend feels like the time we’re going to get them,” he told The Times on Friday. “The feeling I get as a member of this squad is that we’re coming together at just the right time.”

He could not have been more right. Itoje would be the first to insist that victory