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PARIS - South Africa and Argentina today set up a World Cup rugby semifinal showdown on Monday (NZT) and ensured the October 20 final will be a head-on clash between the northern and southern hemispheres.
The Springboks, now the favourites to add the 2007 title to their 1995
triumph after the shock quarterfinal exits of New Zealand and Australia, overcame a storming Fiji fightback with a 37-20 win in Marseille.
Argentina reached their first semifinal with a 19-13 victory over Scotland at the Stade de France and will take on the Springboks at the same venue.
Whoever win that match will tackle either northern hemisphere giants England or France in the final.
History will be against the Pumas who have lost all their 11 previous matches against South Africa.
South African coach Jake White heaped praise on captain John Smit and other senior players for using their experience to see the Springboks past a determined Fiji.
In a physically bruising encounter at the Stade Velodrome, Fiji were 3-13 down at the break but rallied back with a penalty and two converted tries in two minutes to level the scores at 20-20.
But with 20 minutes of the game to play, Smit called in his teammates and rallied them into grounding out a victory, the scoreline of which was flattered by two tries through Juan Smith and Butch James in the last 11min.
"Some players are 20 years old and they looked like it at times today," White said.
"The reality is quite simple: it's pressure. You saw what happened yesterday," he said in reference to England and France's shock quarterfinal wins over Australia and New Zealand respectively.
"The bottom line is that it was the quarterfinal of the World Cup and we scored five tries to two."
The pivotal moment of the match arrived 12min from fulltime when lock Ifereimi Rawaqa looked set to put the Fijians in front for the first time only to be wrapped up in JP Pietersen's desperate covering tackle and was unable to ground the ball.
"We were down to 14 men and to score two tries in that time the players took confidence from that and you could see that South Africa were withering away in a sense but they came back," coach Ilie Tabua said.
Halfback Mosese Rauluni sensed an upset was in the making.
"We had great belief when we were 13-3 down. We knew we were finding holes in their defence and the boys were making breaks, but unfortunately we couldn't finish off," he said.
"A few mistakes were starting to creep into their game and the boys were really bouncing. We were on their try-ine and a little handling mistake probably changed the game for us."
Juan Smith and Butch James added the late tries to add to earlier scores from Jaque Fourie, John Smit and JP Pietersen.
Vilimoni Delasau and Sireli Bobo scored the tries for Fiji who were playing in only their second quarterfinal, having made the last eight having knocked out Wales in the first round.
Both Argentina and Scotland scored a try apiece in front of 77,000 fans at the Stade de France - Gonzalo Longo for Argentina and Chris Cusiter for the Scots - while Felipe Contepomi kicked 11 of the Pumas' points.
"They had a stranglehold on the game. They are very difficult to play against," Scotland coach Frank Hadden said.
"We didn't play well enough. All credit to Argentina, they made life difficult for us."
Argentina skipper Agustin Pichot paid tribute to the Scots.
"We were a little tired but they played very well," Pichot said.
"We stuck to it and won. We wanted to get to the semifinals."
- AFP