First clues don’t always tell the tale.
To arrive at Stade de France on the edge of the Paris peripherique on this cold and drizzly evening for the World Cup Final between the perennial heavyweight All Blacks and Springboks, things felt a lot more like Dunedin than Jo’burg. In the hours preceding the match the heavens had opened for the game they play in . . . well, you know, and even though things were more dry by game time, the previous conditions had made it just feel like New Zealand’s night.
Our cousins across the ditch not only won the toss, but the haka too, and the crowd positively pulsed with people dressed from head to toe in all black. Added to this was that the All Blacks had pretty much cruised through the group and finals stage to get here – apart from beating the pre-tournament favourites, Ireland, by four points in the quarter-finals.
In contrast the Boks had surely exhausted themselves, to scratch and claw their way to two one-point wins over France and England in just the last two weeks. Surely the South Africans could not have much more left in the tank.
And yet?
And yet, right from the kick-off the All Blacks varied between being out of sorts and in all sorts, continually scrambling to keep the Bok brutes back, giving away penalties, losing the odd line-out and clearly struggling against the Boks sheer physicality.
Siya Kolisi lifts The Webb Ellis CupCredit: Getty
Mostly, it felt like a Bok storm sending a raging tide with endless waves crashing right on to All Black shores. While rugby has become a more a game of collision than evasion, and the boffins of biff now talk about “winning the collision zone,” this was collision with concision by the men in green gold and white. Their rucks and mauls were technically excellent and they made very few errors.
Helping them was a fly-half Handre Pollard who continually turned the All Blacks round with pin-point kicks just behind the All Black three-quarters line, punctuated with long rifling kicks to the corners.
To counter them the All Blacks were magnificent in their sheer resilience but sloppy in their execution, which saw first back-rower Shannon Frizell sent off for ten minutes for foul play, and then – catastrophically – captain Sam Cane expelled from the field for a tackle where his shoulder hit his opponent’s head. The New Zealanders entered the sheds down 12-6, and things look grim, Jim.
Could they turn it around for the second-half? Could they possibly stand up to what they knew was a worse storm coming, with the Boks having stacked their bench with seven forwards, in preparation for their new tactic of effectively sending on a new forward pack with twenty minutes to go.?
This time, the clues all pointed to the Boks running away with it.
Jordie Barrett runs the ball up.Credit: Getty
And yet?
And yet, even though it looked like that for all of the first three minutes as the Boks went within centimetres of scoring, the fourteen surviving All Blacks rallied, and were magnificent in their resolution. They refused to bow. They tackled themselves red raw. When denied a superb try in the corner because the tv replay showed a tiny knock-on, they promptly scored another one in much the same place, after winger Mark Tele’a stepped two defenders to put Beauden Barrett away!
The conversion was missed, making it 12-11 to the Springboks, and we all knew we were witnessing a clash of the ages. Two of the fans present, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic had seen and played a lot of sport in their time, but had they ever seen anything like this?
Much of it defied reason, and was very, very “rugby”.
Twice it looked like All Black forwards had got through only for the tiniest man on the field, 1.7 metres on tippy-toes, Faf de Klerk, to first bring the hulking hooker Codie Taylor down with a superb tackle, before, 15 minutes in, actually ripping the ball from an All Black forward rush that got to within five metres of the line!
With eight minutes to go, the William Webb Ellis trophy, hung in the balance. Things looked set for the Springboks – now with their bench emptied and fourteen fresh legs on the field, up against as many All Blacks playing a man down for the last fifty minutes – to record their third successive one point win.
But no-one told the All Blacks.
Time and again, they surged towards the line. Time and again, it was the Boks who scrambled to stop them. It was magnificent rugby with the crowd alternating between ear-splitting roars and stunned silence so profound you could actually hear the collisions from 75 metres away!
Five minutes to go now. And the South Africans are now down to fourteen men, took as their winger Cheslin Kolbe is shown the yellow card for a deliberate knock-on. The All Blacks, have a chance at victory from the resultant long-range penalty only for it to . . . drift . . . left . . . no, straighten! . . . no, left, and miss.
Seconds to go.
Sam Cane of New Zealand looks dejected after getting a red card.Credit: Getty
Bok scrum, 30 metres from their line. It wheels, and collapses. The referee, Wayne Barne, does not look happy.
All eyes are on him.
Is it going to be a kickable All Black penalty, which would be fitting reward for their magnificence in the face of such odds against them?
No. New scrum.
It wheels again, but the Boks have it, and drive it forward, killing it in the maul and savouring every precious second that takes them to . . . The Promised Land!
South Africa’s Jesse Kriel celebrates after the 12-11 win.Credit: AP
For now referee Barnes blows his whistle, and it is all over.
South Africa win their fourth World Cup, after three successive one-point wins, over France, England, and now the All Blacks. Bravo to them.
Bravo also, to the magnificent All Blacks who did everything but win, when rugby logic said they should have been blown off the park.
This was a fabulous Rugby World Cup Final, worthy of the game itself, and this whole superb tournament. This, Novak and Roger, is what we do, when we get a patch of green grass.
Oscar Wilde called rugby a “good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of town,” and there’s something to be said for that, but we’ve evolved to more than mere organised bullying.
We’re not as pretty as tennis, not as delicate, and maybe not even as nuanced. But, by Gawd, on a night like tonight rugby can be a play, a novel, an epic, a Clash for the Ages, all playing out before our very eyes, with nothing certain until the final seconds. We hope you enjoyed it.
Both teams rose to the occasion, and France did a magnificent job of hosting the whole thing.
It is over to Australia now, to host the next one, and work out ways so that it can be the Wallabies – you heard me – menacing the podium in 2027.
From Paris, thrilled, over and out.
