Ian Foster’s All Blacks stand on the precipice of completing their great redemption tale after a 44-6 win over Argentina. Cheree Kinnear and Elliott Smith unpack all the action from Stade de France. Video / NZ Herald / SkySports
OPINION
There I was, watching the sumo wrestling for 28 minutes before I realised it was the Springboks-England World Cup semifinal.
I’d been wondering what’d happened to those big nappies the sumo blokes wear when, at 28 minutes, England second five-eighths Manu Tuilagi touched the ball for the first time.“Look, it’s a back,” I cried to the TV as reality swept over me.
Now I know why Ian Foster, after the All Blacks had dismantled Argentina, said: “I don’t care who wins” about the other semifinal to find their foe in the World Cup final. I stopped caring too. It was the choice between boring and dull; monotonous meets tedious, while the entire southern hemisphere rugby diaspora wonders why the northern hemisphere is in charge of the game they are slowly strangling. The only vestige of excitement came from the intensity and closeness of the score.
No one could score a try before R.G. Snyman’s in the 70th minute - 70 minutes of high kicks, long kicks, penalty kicks, free kicks, ooh... look - grubber kicks - and drop kicks. You really do get your kicks when you watch this kind of rugby, even forgiving them the wet conditions.
Certain British critics panned the All Blacks’ 44-6 win over the Pumas as “a shuddering World Cup comedown” (Chris Foy, Daily Mail); “an instantly forgettable affair” (Ruaidhri O’Connor, Irish Independent); “How dare they score so many tries in a World Cup semifinal?” (Bill Boreham, Daily Drivel).
Okay, I made that last one up - but only the northern hemisphere can produce a match like the second semifinal and revel in it. Oh, yes, the Boks are southern hemisphere in origin but they play a lot against northern opposition in club and international rugby these days.
You can’t even really blame the stupid World Cup system of making the draw years ahead of the tournament. That draw gave us the All Blacks against Ireland and France versus South Africa in one weekend - two matches that will easily go in the top drawer of all World Cup clashes. Then came this; a throwback to the 10-man rugby of the 1960s, refereed by a man who tried hard not to award penalties so that the players, not he, would be the biggest influence.
Auckland’s sewage flowed better into the Waitematā Harbour after the sinkhole episode than this game did.
South Africa's Faf de Klerk celebrates after the team were awarded a penalty. Photo / Getty Images
Tuilagi took 28 minutes to touch the ball; Boks centre Jesse Kriel didn’t touch it until the 54th minute - knocking it on. Freddie Steward, England’s 1.96-metre fullback, fielded every high kick sent his way in a terrific display. Then, in the 74th minute, he dropped one; his only mistake. South Africa collected a scrum penalty from the ensuing set piece; Handre Pollard kicked the goal that won the match.
You could maybe forgive things hinging on one error if there had been some kind of adventure and creativity beforehand. But it was kick, kick and more kick, and poor old England just didn’t have it in them to score a try, demonstrated by bringing on first five George Ford late in the game, clearly for a drop kick play.
It meant Johnny May was taken off the wing to make way for Ford and Owen Farrell to be on the same field. But who was on the wing? Didn’t matter. We saw the wings about as often as we see woolly mammoths. The teams simply played for a knock-on or a penalty in the wet - the same wet in which we have seen the All Blacks of various iterations run, pass and score tries. Because that is the name of the game where we come from.
In past years, I have always attempted to explain the disparity between north and south as the way we were raised in New Zealand and Australia. At school during breaks, we were always out there, playing with the ball, unconsciously perfecting skills, just having fun playing touch. Or bullrush, or anything which involved movement and the joy of creating.
Yet we are now approaching 30 years of the professional game - surely the north can do better than this wooden display and be more like the England, who played real rugby when they beat the All Blacks in the 2019 semifinal, even though we know the laws of the modern game predicate against the daring and reward percentages.
None of this should be read as suggesting the Springboks can’t win against the flashy, dashy, All Blacks. We all know what they did just before this World Cup. The defending champions had an off day against England - they out-Bokked them; they slowed the game down, had multiple committee meetings and injury stops, kicked better and applied scoreboard pressure with penalties.
But maybe justice was served. One English penalty went against Pieter Steph du Toit for obstruction that looked nothing like it. In the end, the Boks won it with their bench, the “bomb squad”, while England’s bench gave us the other meaning of the word “bomb”.
When it comes to a question of style, we in New Zealand who value the beauty of the game, as opposed to just bump and grind, will be hoping for an All Blacks win, with even a little bit of style among the hard-fought, physical stuff.
It’s not just about national pride and the fact whoever wins will become the first country to win four men’s World Cups. It’s also about aesthetics and the game it could be, as opposed to what it was in that second semifinal.
Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic & Commonwealth Games and more.
