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The crunch decision making that turned the Springboks' tide
Was there ever a point where they didn’t believe it would happen? Every time the camera switched to the Springboks coaches’ box Rassie Erasmus, Jacques Nienaber and the rest wore pained expressions as if they were men on a sinking ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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The players on the pitch looked similarly despondent. With the Paris sky chucking it down, they made the ball seem like a bar of soap. A usually efficient rugby machine was rusting and misfiring before our eyes. They were supposed to walk this contest against a previously disjointed England outfit. Instead, they were walking out of the World Cup.
Manie Libbok had a stinker. So did Cobus Reinach and Damian Willemse. The 9-10-15 axis is one that has been a cornerstone of South Africa’s march to glory over the past eight years but tonight, in a game that mattered more than most, it was coming undone.
Of course, it wasn’t only their fault. Eben Ezebeth produced arguably his worst performance for his country in 118 Tests. Around him the rest of the tight five was getting outfought and out thought. The line-out was a damp squib. Even the scrum failed to produce the requisite go-forward grunt.
Before the restart, with South Africa trailing 12-6, Siya Kolisi and his players were out on the pitch much earlier than England. No doubt they received a deserved bollocking. Something had to give.
Except it didn’t.
Not initially. The early moments of the first half were as abject as all 40 minutes of the first. And when Owen Farrell slotted a drop-goal on 53 minutes, it felt as if this World Cup dream was over for the reigning champions.
South African fans, how did you feel at that moment? Like your brain was dividing by zero? You’re not alone. It was hard to compute. This wasn’t what was promised on the tin. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.
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Credit must go to England. They were just as pugilistic, pugnacious and pragmatic as they’d been all tournament. They started the weekend as the only unbeaten team in the competition though this fact was dismissed as a consequence of their relatively pedestrian route to the semi-finals. Perhaps we had it all wrong. Maybe they slogged out ugly wins not only because that was the only way they knew how to get the job done, but because they reduced even fluent teams to stuttering bumblers.
And that is what they did to South Africa. England won the line-out and the battle in the air. They harassed the Boks’ back three and were quicker at the breakdown. Every time a man in green tried to do something, anything, someone in white made a mess of it.
To their credit, the coaches acted decisively. At the time it felt reckless to make so many changes so early in the game. Libbok for Handre Pollard after just half an hour. Willemse and Reinach for Faf de Klerk and Willie le Roux shortly after the break. Etzebeth for RG Snyman. But in retrospect, all of those switches made a difference. Pollard’s boot secured the winning points and Snyman’s drive over the line registered an important try that confirmed the momentum shift with a little more than 10 minutes to play. But it was the replacements in the front row that truly won the game for the Boks.
Ox Nche was a monster. A titan. A consumer of worlds. After heady nights like this, no superlative is too hyperbolic. He is famous for quipping that salads don’t win scrums and Springboks fans will hope that the renowned cake-eater inhales every gateau in France over the next seven days. Lettuce leaves be damned!
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Along with Vincent Koch, the replacement heavies won three crucial penalties at set piece. The first helped alleviate pressure when England had the feed in South Africa’s red zone after Kurt-Lee Arendse fumbled a bouncing ball. Then they won a penalty that led to a line-out down field and Deon Fourie charging from a splintered maul and Snyman touching down. Then they won a penalty which gave Pollard a shot at goal from just inside England’s half on the angle.
Without those three penalty wins at the scrum, South Africa would be competing for a bronze medal next week. Now they’ll take a shot at their fiercest rivals, the New Zealand All Blacks, for a fourth World Cup crown.
Those are the minute margins of elite sport. Epic encounters – and this was epic, even though it wasn’t clinical – are determined by events that ripple across time like scattered pebbles on a still lake. Each one adds to the whirling, swirling picture. Each one impacts on the other.
But clashes of this nature, and especially those involving a team like the Springboks, are also swayed by things beyond our sight. It’s hard not to get swept up in the magic of a side that believes it is compelled by a sense of destiny when it triumphs from despair. Was ever a point where they didn’t believe it would happen? Don’t bet on it.
If Farrell hadn't gifted South Africa the first 3 points by gobbing off to the referee we might well have won
Error strewn Bok performance, resulting from smart England game plan, bad weather and a fair dollop of Bok complacency (the age-old Achilles heel of the Springboks). The Boks could not string together any kind of an attack. It was all about dropped balls, ruck turnovers, disrupted mauls, and poorly executed kicks. And the Bok numbers 11-15 were barely in the game, from an attacking perspective.
Fair play to Borthwick and his coaching team. The conservative game plan, about minimizing mistakes, penalties and turnovers, was foreseeable and would inevitably present a challenge for an opponent that loves capitalizing on errors. But the successful disruption of the SA possession was less predictable, and it nearly resulted in the win for England.
In the end SA got their arms around it enough to get some production in attack, and tries were looking possible before the actual try was scored. The substitutions materially impacted the balance of power in the game, and the Bok chances went from No Hope to Race Against Time.
Overall I think the game was more about the weather than has been recognized. The players in white have played in the rain for their entire careers, whereas most of the players in green have done so much less frequently. And it is notable that Pollard has had much more experience in bad weather than Libbok has, which may have been a major factor in the early replacement. I can imagine the coaches reading it as a need for a bad weather fly half, which may even have been a pre-match discussion: How will Manie manage in the rain? For that matter a number of the replacements had spent time in Europe, including Faf, Snyman, Le Roux and Koch, and you could argue that the finishing team was more of a wet weather outfit than the starters. This was not a game played in the Highveld sun.
Were the Boks complacent? They say No, of course. But in that first half they looked like they were expecting to get home on cruise control. It looked like Trust the Systems had become Leave it to the Systems. They looked like they were cranking the handle, rather than executing a targeted game plan. And many of the usual giants were individually AWOL. SA is always at their most vulnerable when they start believing that they are favorites. At that point a playing style based on 100% intensity drops by a percentage point or two, the pressure on the opponent drops by a lot more than that, and the Boks start looking beatable.
Well done England. Boks - your opponents this week will be studying that tape. The semi could be the cracks before the collapse, or it could be the shock that you need to propel you into a decent performance on Saturday. Hoping for the latter.
You say Manie had a stinker, so what did he actually do to deserve that? Like seriously think about it what did he do wrong? Reinach’s box kicks might not have been the most powerful but likewise didn’t do much wrong.
The subbing of Faf and Pollard changed very little in this game. For the first 40 minutes Pollard was on the gap did not change, in fact it got worse. So where does this idea come from that Pollard steered the ship and brought the come back.
The real come back came when we brought Ox on. Without him we lose this game and the other subs would not make enough of a difference. Maybe Trevor could have had the same impact but otherwise we were just plain lucky that he was so dominant in the scrums.
Deon and Kwagga brought some variety in forward play that just got us over the line.
One wonders if Kolisi and Etzebeth among others (Mbonambi? Vermeulen?) are dealing with health issues. At this stage, few players are at 100%, but they made few contributions to the victory.
Boks management used their bench without sentimentality and with a huge impact on the game result. Hard to think when the ABs have been that ruthless in recent years.