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Ireland and France came into the World Cup as favourites, South Africa won by beating New Zealand in a match between the classic champions of the sport.
By Pete McKenzie
Report from Wellington, New Zealand
As the 2023 Rugby World Cup championship entered its final half-minute, defending champions South Africa’s Springboks braced themselves for a brutal final fight. In front of them were New Zealand’s iconic but troubled All Blacks, desperately fighting for a victory few expected just weeks earlier.
A minor infringement forced a scrum – a massive fight for the ball – and gave the All Blacks a chance to triumph over a 12-11 deficit. On the bench, Cheslin Kolbe, a Springbok sent off with a yellow card, pulled up his shirt. his head in despair. In the crowd, tears streamed down the face of a fan dressed with a South African flag around his neck.
The next 30 seconds would determine whether the All Blacks or the Springboks would become the first team to win 4 men’s world titles. The tumult began and then collapsed. There were seven seconds left. The melee reset. A Springbok won the ball and was outplayed by the All Blacks. Players fell writhing. The whistle blows. The game was over. The Springboks had won.
This year aims to be different. Before the start of the World Cup in September, the All Blacks were rebuilding and the Springboks had lost key matches, while Ireland and France crowned the global rankings and looked very likely to win the World Cup crown, which would have been the first for any nation.
But in seven weeks of fierce competition, demonstrating the enduring strength of rugby’s classic champions, the All Blacks and ultimately the Springboks eliminated their rivals, creating the most shocking and at the same time least unexpected championship in recent memory.
This is largely due to the fact that the Springboks’ victory isn’t just about rugby. The first and only time they faced New Zealand in a World Cup final before this year was in 1995, after the collapse of the apartheid regime. that had repressed the country’s black population, a formula whose symbol had long been rugby.
After taking the South African presidency, however, Nelson Mandela used the Springboks to help unify the nation, giving them the motto “One Team, One Country.” Their victory in 1995 in Johannesburg against New Zealand was a moment of transformative fusion.
“When the final whistle blew, this country replaced forever,” Francois Pienaar, captain of the Springboks in 1995, told The Observer.
That year, 4-year-old Siya Kolsi grew up in poverty in an overcrowded South African township. Born to teenage parents and raised by his grandmother, Kolisi summed up as a child the precariousness of post-apartheid South Africa, which struggled with corruption. and instability.
As Kolisi grew up, he proved to be a talented rugby player and eventually became the first black captain of the Springboks, whom he led to victory at the 2019 World Cup. In doing so, he has a “bright light” of opportunities for the Southern blacks. Africans, said Gcobani Bobo, former Springboks and rugby analyst.
This private, collective history has also cheered Kolisi and the Springboks on at this year’s tournament. “A lot of other people lost their lives for me to be on the loose and they lost their lives for me to wear this shirt,” Kolisi told the BBC in October.
In the quarterfinals, South Africa beat France in the suburbs of Paris, inflicting a devastating defeat on the tournament hosts. Despite the country’s obsession with rugby, with many of the most sensible athletes competing for their clubs with deep pockets, France has never won a World Cup title. This year, however, the team was led by Antoine Dupont, arguably the most productive player in the world. The French enthusiasts hoped that he would still be able to take the team to the finish.
Those hopes were jeopardized early, when Dupont fractured his cheekbone in the group stage. In a sign of his determination to win, he donned a protective cap and returned to the field against South Africa.
However, the French golden boy’s signature spark may not triumph over the Springboks’ mission. After narrowly failing, Dupont collapsed on the field, covered his face, and lamented the French defeat.
After eliminating France, the Springboks’ historic goal also strengthened them against New Zealand, fortifying them as they fought just meters from their starting line, helping them hold out long enough for Kolisi to become the second captain in history to win two World Cups. Cups. values.
Bobo recalled how, as a child, his father saw the Springboks as an “untouchable shirt” symbolizing the “old regime. “Now, she says, she’s raising her own son. And the only thing he knows about the Springboks is Uncle Siya, the captain of the world champions. “
For the All Blacks, the defeat was crushing. The world’s most famous rugby team, New Zealand, has been dogged in recent years by horrific performances, summed up in defeats to Ireland at home in Dunedin and Wellington in 2022, the first time the All Blacks have lost a home run since 1994.
The losing streak increased so much that the team’s coach, Ian Foster, was on the verge of being fired. His task only remained when the team sent the Springboks to their castle in Johannesburg shortly after defeats to the Irish.
Still, New Zealand Rugthrough, the sport’s national governing body, forced Foster to fire two of his assistant coaches and announced his conceivable replacement, indicating he did not expect success at the World Cup. The All Blacks rallied around their long-suffering coach and, shortly after, began to win again.
The victories were uneven, marred by a draw against a struggling England and a subsequent defeat to the Springboks. However, they had the ingredients for a provocative comeback. That promotion culminated in a quarter-final win over Ireland that symbolised how far they had come.
Ireland, captained by the inimitable Johnny Sexton, had entered the number one tournament in the world. After decades of defeats in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, tens of thousands of enthusiasts thronged into Paris to watch their heroes break the curse.
Yet the All Blacks could not be overcome. By the end, all it would have taken was one Irish try. But through 37 Irish assaults over the game’s final five minutes, the All Blacks endured, amassing a staggering 100 tackles in the final quarter as they rebuffed every assault and sent Sexton, who had said he’d retire after the tournament, off the field for the final time.
As he did so, his son accompanied him, seeking to reassure a tearful father whose career hopes had been dashed. Putting his arm around him, Sexton’s son leaned in and said, “You’re the most productive father. “
Later, the All Blacks ruled their semi-final against Argentina, so confident of victory that they opted to fight without a single player at the end, to minimise the risk of injury to a player. The resolution was ironic. In the team’s next clash against South Africa, Sam Cane, the captain of the All Blacks, collided with the head of a Springbok and became the first player to get a red card in a World Cup final.
With Cane ejected from the match, his team was forced to fight for 51 minutes at a disadvantage for the players. Still, New Zealand kept pushing, throwing black waves against the green walls until their efforts culminated in a try – the first goal ever. scored against South Africa in the World Cup final. Suddenly, the name is within reach: a definitive opportunity to build a team and a coach that were once considered the worst in New Zealand’s fashion history.
But in the clash between the All Blacks’ quest for redemption and the Springboks’ quest for history, South Africa won. The All Blacks, with their penalty shootouts, their penalties, wasted their chances.
At the end of the match, they stood motionless and incredulous amid scenes of South African jubilation. On the bench, Cane folded his hands over his mouth and struggled with the loss of his justification shot.
“There’s a lot of angst in the hangars right now,” he said later at a news conference, referring to his teammates in the locker room. He added, “It’s anything that, unfortunately, I’m going to have to deal with forever. “»
“The All Blacks are driven through history,” said Scotty Stevenson, New Zealand’s rugby analyst and biographer of several All Blacks. But the disappointing defeat, he said, shows the All Blacks “don’t dominate like they used to” after decades. that they were in the world.
Now, as New Zealand mourns the loss of its supremacy, the Springboks savor a victory that took their country with them.
“There are so many things in our country,” Kolisi told ITV. “We are the last line of defense. “
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