Leading up to the last round of pool play we repeated the line over and over: that it didn't really matter whether we played France or Ireland. We probably meant it at the time, but as soon as we found out we were playing France, my immediate thought was of 2007, and losing the quarter-final to them 20-18.
I didn't talk about it in the media - I didn't want to fuel the fire. But ... it was hard not to think about it. There was a big part of me that wanted to right the wrongs of 2007, and felt this was a perfect opportunity. The way I saw it, there were two ways we could go about it: either let it daunt you and worry that it might happen again; or walk towards it, embrace it, view it as the opportunity I've wanted ever since that day in 2007 - playing the same team, in the same stadium ... but this time succeeding.
It wasn't just the opposition sharpening our minds. There was some genuine fear early in that week, because we hadn't been performing throughout the Rugby World Cup. In patches we had played okay, but never across a full 80 minutes. Between that and the parallels with 2007, there was a real edge to training. To help our head game we met with Ceri Evans, the psychologist. He showed us a clip of a cliff diver aiming for a little hole in a rock. We talk about do or die, but it's very literal for those extreme sportsmen: if they get it wrong, they're dead! They have to be so focused on the moment. The talk made us recalibrate and really focus, again, on the process, rather than the outcome.
You don't know exactly what drives a performance. But for whatever reason - the opponent, the venue, Ceri's talk, or genuine fear about the way we'd been playing - everything just flowed. We played brilliantly. We learnt from 2007 and 2003, when we had looked too far ahead, that nothing was guaranteed after that quarter-final. So, we saw this as our final. That's all we had guaranteed in this tournament. Afterwards we were just so happy to give ourselves another week.
For 24 hours after beating the French we let the performance wash over us, allowed ourselves to reflect on one of the best games we've had as a group. But come Monday, after the review, we put a full stop on the quarter-final, and started looking forward to South Africa. It was actually really hard, because as the week went on we were still hearing about it: from fans; from friends; from the media. It was challenging at times to forget about it and concentrate on the Springboks.
