Reaction outside Stade de France to the Springboks beating the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup final. Video / NZ Herald
OPINION
Firstly: South Africa won it fair and square.
Secondly: South Africa are better at not playing rugby than the All Blacks are at playing rugby.
Thirdly: the sport of rugby must lift itself out of this miserable morass of complicated rules which lead to a band of officialsbecoming the key influence, not the players or the actual play. If not, it is in danger of penalising itself to death, shunned by millions instead of attracting squillions.
Expanding on the first point, the Springboks butchered three tries by my count - two in the first half when Damian Willemse and then Siya Kolisi didn’t pass when they could have and the third early in the second half when winger Kurt-Lee Arendse lost the ball over the line when he’d beaten Beauden Barrett to it.
That also proves the second point: they like to play without the ball, less able to fashion try-scoring finishes. While most All Blacks fans - and players - hate to admit it, the Boks’ style of possession, kick, defend, and kick the goals is a legitimate and effective way of winning. The All Blacks did it for years in the 1960s. We don’t like it, but it is so.
The modern game has a set of rules and interpretations by the match officials which predicate against attacking teams, rewarding defences.
As South Africa have consistently shown, it is often better to play without the ball rather than to run and pass it. How sad is that? How ridiculous?
The All Blacks chose to employ their usual attacking, ball-in-hand strategy, even down to 14 men, and still could have won it had that long Jordie Barrett penalty attempt gone over, as it would have on a different day. But the percentages won. Again.
In fact, this was the only one of the Boks’ four World Cup finals in which a try was scored against them - and they have only once (2019) scored a try in the final themselves. Says a lot, doesn’t it?
The World Cup final suffered because of the inconsistency of those policing the rules. Wayne Barnes is comfortably the best referee in the world but he had a poor day; one mistake led to an early three points against the All Blacks. The TMO stayed silent then - but not afterwards.
How the bunker could rationalise that Sam Cane’s was a red card, while Kolisi’s was not, stands as an indictment of the system. It is supposed to deliver precision - correct determinations.
All it has done is shift the finger of blame from the referee to the faceless and unaccountable bunker.
Sam Cane leaves the pitch after receiving a yellow card which was upgraded to red. Photo / Getty Images
The endless halts for endless conversations between officials, and replays galore means the game becomes woefully stop-start. The delays and the cards also play into the hands of South Africa’s game plan. Fair enough - their canny strategy and selection (including seven forwards on the eight-man bench) is designed to take advantage of rugby as it is structured now.
Man-of-the-match, justifiably, was South Africa flanker Pieter-Steph du Toit. His was a display absolutely redolent of the Boks’ heart and their major strengths: defence and commitment. He made inspirational tackles all day. He is, however, no Ardie Savea on attack. If they kick the goals, he doesn’t have to be.
That commitment also comes from a different place. The Boks’ drive to win is also a political force - it pulls the country together. It maybe helps to, even temporarily, relieve the burden of the 18 million South Africans who live in “extreme poverty” on less than US$1.90 ($3.27) a day.
“As soon as we work together, all things are possible,” said Kolisi, interviewed after the match, referring to the role the multi-cultural Springboks play in the national psyche.
So, once all this dust settles, surely rugby’s world body will address the structure of a game so in need of an overhaul that its pinnacle event - the World Cup final - is flawed.
Not a bit of it.
Much of the Northern Hemisphere play the same way as the Boks - only not as well - and they are not likely to shift, if the writings of one Oliver Brown, allegedly chief sportswriter for London’s Daily Telegraph, are any guide.
On the eve of the final, Brown published a piece headlined “All Blacks’ nauseating sanctimony will be at all-time high if they secure a World Cup victory” - a rant that made me worry for the guy’s mental wellbeing.
The All Blacks “seek a monopoly on moral rectitude” and are “unmatched for syrupy self-promotion”, compelled to “keep telling everyone how wonderful they are”. He decried the All Blacks’ “better people make better All Blacks” saying by dredging up Shannon Frizell’s 2021 misdemeanour. He also pulled up from the depths of time the Tana Umaga-Keven Mealamu tackle on Brian O’Driscoll in the Lions tour of 2005.
He returned to the long-discredited link that O’Driscoll’s injury was caused by All Blacks angry at his supposed disrespect of the haka, somehow using this to illustrate that the All Blacks “expect genuflection at their feet, even when such deference is rarely deserved”.
This was probably the childish textual tantrum of a scribe who thought the north would finally prevail at this tournament and who used the All Blacks as a target for the toys biffed out of the cot.
But there are a lot of people in the north who think like Brown, poor souls - and that is why the game of rugby and the way it is played isn’t likely to change much.
The north can’t win the Cup - but they can control how it is played and may too late realise the game over which they hold dominion is, if not dying, then carrying grievous injury. Much more serious than O’Driscoll’s.
