LONG READ 'The Boks will go again. It is what they do.'

There is a strong temptation when writing about a match like that in a city like Paris to stitch connecting threads between events on the field and the world around it.

The totemic Eben Etzebeth can easily be likened to the Eiffel Tower. Antoine Dupont’s brushstrokes wouldn’t be out of place at the Louvre. In every bistro, down every boulevard, across every arrondissement there is meaning and metaphor.

But on a crisp Monday morning, where hangovers mix with heartache, the most poignant through line is found among the quiet tombs in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Here you’re reminded of the finality of all things. Of the insatiable appetite of time. How even aristocrats and war heroes and rockstars can’t hold back the darkness.

Fabien Galthie’s team have been eliminated from their own World Cup but this is not the end of their journey. Galthie himself remains under contract until 2028. Uini Atonio, who will now retire from Test rugby, is the oldest member of the squad at 33. Gael Fickou is 28. Thomas Ramos is 31. Dupont is 26 and Romain Ntamack, who was so cruelly sidelined with injury before the tournament, is 24.

This group has yet to reach its apex and yet the post-match press conference around midnight on Sunday, delayed due to President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the French dressing room, had the same energy as a wake.

Voltaire said death awakes us from painful dreams, and gives us either a better existence or no existence at all. This is not the death of French rugby, just as Ireland’s loss to New Zealand the night before will not herald a great decline. But it’s hard not to wonder if some teams, perhaps all teams, carry with them institutional memories that nestle in the collective consciousness of those who represent and support them.

Elite athletes will tell you the past is a foreign country. That what came before has no bearing on what will happen next. But history is a series of falling dominoes and narrative quickly calcifies into legend which in turn morphs into ingrained truths.

South Africa’s captain Siya Kolisi said his team “wanted it more”. That just cannot be true. It’s hard to imagine a man wanting anything more than Dupont wanted to become a world champion in front of his own people.

Ireland did not choke and yet they once again lost a World Cup quarter-final. Wales did not bottle it and yet they once again lost a game they had in their grasp. England have been on the cusp of awful and are once again the flag bearers of northern hemisphere rugby. This French side has carried with them a sense of destiny for four years and yet they were vanquished when it mattered most.

When asked why his team triumphed in a contender for the greatest exhibition of rugby there’s ever been, South Africa’s captain Siya Kolisi said his team “wanted it more”. That just cannot be true. It’s hard to imagine a man wanting anything more than Dupont wanted to become a world champion in front of his own people. The team around him ached for a fairytale and the streets of Paris hours before tingled with yearning.

No, that’s not it. Jim Morrison, who now rests eternally at Pere Lachaise, believed “each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names, they want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.” That’s easier said than done, which is a daunting truth for France and Ireland, but it is a delight for the South Africans who can start to see a glinting golden trophy shining on the horizon.

France carried over the gainline 82 times. South Africa managed just 36. The French beat 43 defenders to 12 and offloaded 13 times to keep the attack moving. They won 47 more rucks than the Springboks and spent just under a third of the match in the opposition’s half. Citing destinies and intergenerational traumas as a reason for a rugby result might seem like a cop-out disguised as a literary flourish, but can we categorically rule them out?

Damian Willemse called for a scrum after taking a mark in his own 22. Who does that? What on earth was he thinking? And yet it paid off as South Africa’s front-row won a penalty at the set-piece. Cheslin Kolbe charged down a conversion in a game  decided by a single point. And even as France held a 25-19 lead with under 20 minutes to go, South Africa tapped and went from close range to score with Etzebeth carrying the weight of French history with him as he crashed over.

When the final whistle sounded, a shrill death knell which pierced the night after the most intense resistance from those in bottle green, all those who heard it felt an immediate double tug. The reality we were confronted with both defied belief and made perfect sense. South Africa won a game they perhaps should have lost. They remained standing when their legs should have long turned to jelly. How the hell do they find the energy to go again in six days’ time?

There is no doubt they will. Not just because it’s their job and because they continue to ride a self-perpetuating mythology they’re representing 60 million South Africans. They’ll go again because that is what they do. It’s what they’ve always done. Anything else would be a betrayal of their own DNA.

Death doesn’t stop time for those who carry on though we should at least pause and recognise the fallen French.

Death doesn’t stop time for those who carry on though we should at least pause and recognise the fallen French. Oscar Wilde, another resident at Pere Lachaise, said it best in his poem The Sphinx, described as the “the quintessential piece of fin-de-siécle art”.

Four lines adorn his tomb of Hopton Wood stone:

And alien tears will fill for him

Pity’s long-broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men,

And outcasts always mourn.

Thanks to Kolisi’s Springboks, they’ll be mourning Dupont’s outcast men around Paris this week.