For most of my youth I loathed rugby. Having been forced to play it at school without ever understanding the rules, it appeared to mainly consist of an organised brawl involving a pack of boys, pretty much all of whom were bigger than me and determined to leave me with permanent physical damage.

But today England take on South Africa in the 2019 Rugby World Cup final. And watching from the safety of my living room I’ve learned that it’s a game of enormous strength, skill, pace and nerve. But even professionals can be left with permanent damage – the most easily spotted of which is the cauliflower ear. It’s a common sight, too, in wrestlers, boxers and, bizarrely, people who move pianos. It may be disfiguring, says our anatomy expert, but you could always see it as a badge of courage.

In cooperation with our colleagues in South Africa we’ve also assembled a smorgasbord of half-time reading to fill you in on everything from the importance of inspirational coaching to the long sporting rivalry between the two countries and why we mustn’t be so hard on referees.

While not musing on sport and politics this week, we also learned the five words that people most commonly get wrong and we paid tribute to John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist whose passion for tree planting earned him the title of England’s first environmentalist.

Meanwhile from our colleagues around the world, we found out the best way to reassure an insecure partner and salivated at an explanation as to why pizza tastes so good.

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