Match 25 -- England v. South Africa

Saturday, 21 October 2023

My 25th match, and the 46th of the tournament, was England v. South Africa in Paris.

I walked from the hotel to the stadium again. It was raining and windy when I left the hotel, and stayed that way the whole evening.

When I got to the stadium, just after passing through the ticket gate, but before finding my seat, I got a text message from Justin asking where my seat was. I replied "Section N10, but I'm just now walking in." Not thirty seconds after pressing "send", I bumped into him in the concourse. A stadium of 78,000+ people and I find the only person I know. (Well, there aren't 78,000 people here yet, but you know what I mean.) Also, I forgot to mention in the ARG v. NZL post that as I was walking in to the stadium I walked right by the President of the New Zealand rugby team, Max Spence, and recognized him from when I saw him at the bench ceremony on Day 21. So I know two people from New Zealand and saw them on consecutive days in huge crowds.

Justin and I talked for a while, then he went off to find more cups to turn in for a refund. He said he already turned in 40+ from yesterdays match and has almost paid for today's ticket. I headed off to find my seat. And I found one cup on my way. My seat was behind the try zone, in row three. An English couple to my right and a South African guy to my left. The third row is theoretically under the roof of the stadium, but with any amount of wind at all, the rain still hits the first twenty or thirty rows. And it rained lightly the entire time. But I didn't care -- I'm at the freakin' Rugby World Cup!

The view back toward the stands

The view toward the field. The security guy looked miserable the entire time

The national anthems. That's Joe Marler in the middle of the giant screen -- you'll see him again when I do a post about the best haircuts of the tournament 

Much like yesterday, this wasn't expected to be a very competitive matchup. Even though England is the only undefeated team in the tournament, they've been playing just barely good enough to win, while South Africa has been looking really good. As Justin observed, it'll take the best possible England performance against about the worst possible South Africa performance in order for England to win. But hey, anything can happen in international rugby.

England got off to an early lead -- 6-0 after ten minutes. It was a messy match -- raining the entire time -- so there were a lot of handling errors. England seem to have incorporated it into their strategy, as they kicked the ball to South Africa a lot and hoped to get it back through a mistake on the receiving end. And it worked. Loads of kicking in the first half. Penalty kicks and kicks for territory. South Africa's starting fly half -- Manie Libbok -- struggled with his kicking. He shanked several kicks early in the match. Enough so that he was replace by Handre Pollard after only 31 minutes. 

More penalty kicks for each side and we went into half time with England leading 12-6. Owen Farrell kicked a drop goal for England early in the second half to go up 15-6. With these sloppy conditions, a nine-point lead might hold up. South Africa did a good job with their substitutes and started pushing England around. RG Snyman scored a try for the Springboks with about ten minutes left to get them to within two points, 15-13. It's gonna come down to the wire!

South Africa won a penalty with two minutes left and Pollard kicked it through. They now led, 16-13, for the first time in the match. England worked furiously for the next few minutes to get into scoring position, but to no avail. South Africa held them off and will face New Zealand in the final next Saturday. England will play Argentina on Friday for the bronze medal.

I mentioned Owen Farrell earlier. His drop goal was impressive, but I (and many others) have always found his attitude insufferable. I took a little bit of pleasure in the fact that at one of the first-half penalties awarded to South Africa, Farrell argued with the referee, and the ref marched it another ten meters forward. There are no guarantees, but the original penalty spot would have had a fairly low likelihood of a successful kick, and the new spot, ten meters closer, was a much more makeable kick. And Libbok did indeed make it, bringing the score to 6-3. And yes, that three points would be the difference between an England loss and an England win. So one could realistically say that Farrell's attitude cost them the match. 

After the match, motivated by Justin's story, I collected 31more cups. They would only refund for ten at a time, and the line was long enough that I didn't want to go through it again, so I took the remaining 22 with me to take back on Friday. I then found another 24 outside the stadium, so I have 46 to exchange on Friday evening.

[And an administrative note: I found a setting to enable anonymous comments. So now all of y'all who have been wanting to post comments can do so without creating a Google account.]

...doug