Mark Hudson and Ben Turner, whose scrambled goal in the last couple of minutes of extra time forced penalties, were superb in central defence while further forward Joe Mason dispatched his goal that gave Cardiff the lead with supreme confidence.
Meeting Spain in the knockout round, Ireland forced penalties with the score at 1 1 at the end of extra time.
With a minute to go in last night's game against Germany, a game that only comes around once every four years, a free kick 30 yards from goal gave Lionel Messi a chance to equalize and force penalty kicks.
Palm Beach endured a nervous ending to extra-time after going down to 10 men with 12 minutes remaining, Eoghan Morgan having received his marching orders for a second bookable offence, but they hung on to force penalties.
Tunisia created few chances to force penalties before the match ended on a sour note with chaos in the Bata Stadium.
Martin Skrtel cancelled out Mason's strike in the second half and Dirk Kuyt thought he had won it for Liverpool with an instinctive extra-time finish, only for Ben Turner to bundle home at the death to force penalties.
In probably his last Test outing on home soil, Brian O'Driscoll operated instead more like a third flanker than the great centre he is - a breakdown bandit winning turnovers and forcing penalties.
Rather than Ireland taking control, driving the opposition inexorably back with territorial kicking and forcing penalties at the breakdown, it was England's young bucks who performed like grizzled veterans and squeezed out the winning points.
But Toulon had the edge in the scrums and won some important line-outs against the throw, and in the closing stages they regularly halted Sarries' attacks by dominating the ruck, where Chris Masoe was a real menace, and forcing penalties and turnovers.
Godman pulled an angled penalty wide after a Scottish break had forced another penalty, but he made it 6-3 in the 57th minute with a 44-meter kick which went over off the inside of the post.
