There aren’t enough words to do justice to the drama of the epic World Cup quarter-final clash between South Africa and France in Paris on Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped HARRY JONES from trying.
First-class Dublin cricketer Samuel Beckett wrote a play on waiting for miracles which never happen, like a referee’s ruling: “The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
Godot never came and France is gone. Their flags lie flaccid, the constant quantity of their anthem filled up by four guests, tricolour wigs float in the dreary dark Saint-Denis canal, the air is cool, the cock has croaked, and as with all Gallic nightmares, bloody England remains.
Four contests staged and done: two dramas in the Marseille sun and a pair of northern night matches which delayed the hopes of the North for yet another day.
The number of “greatest ever” or “incomparable” or “unequaled” descriptions of the two Parisian quarter-finals was striking, but when we — French and South Africans in droves — walked to the arena on Sunday night, we only knew we were lucky to be there, on such a night.
South Africa will not relinquish the Cup easily. Or at all.
Watch: World Champion Boks make a point
In a collision and combat sport which more than any other code mimics war, history tends to repeat itself. Rugby has an even longer memory than fickle football or rickety cricket. A cousin of sporting memory is forethought. If the past is with us and the dead matter, the future is also here and what will be, is now. Three of the four who ever won the Cup are in the final four.
When you daydream of a game on a night for years and then it has arrived, the true partisan knows there is nothing which can replicate do-or-die, win-or-go, for all the nuts, make-your-name pressure.
Nobody knew whether this would be the Green and the Black or the Blue and the Green but everyone knew the clash would be titanic.
We were pinching ourselves but fronting by chanting and drinking and massing in packs exuding nerves.
But back in the more primitive parts of our brains: what time is it, when do the gates open, what will happen, will we win or lose?
The accumulated anxiety led to a communal toxin of bravado.
Thus, every beer backpacker had drained his tank in minutes.
Several taps malfunctioned under the weight of the demand of the thirsty and the stressed. As Stendhal had it in The Red and the Black: “After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.” No champagne was on offer. Just pilsener poison and broken spigots.
The Blue and the Green who trod the gently rocking bridge over the still canal as night fell over the Stade de France eyed each other warily.
The evening walk from the Basilique, built 888 years ago, was a rare pilgrimage for these two rivals. Proud France had not hosted the reigning champion yet: the feel was a jousting tourney between two formidable knights, one from far away, the host with 70,000 tipsy singing squires.
A nine o’clock start demands disciplined drinking. Go large at noon with the oysters at the Cafe de la Paix and you need a nap. Get in line too late and you will be waiting for a Beckett beer forever, whilst a French fanatic headbutts you, in a friendly way.
Let me be clear. I was waiting for beer when a short Frenchman headbutted my chin. I worked out it was his way of welcoming me and we reprised it a few times until it turned into a scrum of sorts and then my beer arrived.
After lineouts formed outside Entry D and a maul turned into a mosh pit, it was time to go in, into the Bleu sea of single-minded love of home and team and victory.
Having been in full and fervent rugby houses in Cardiff, Dublin, London, Sydney and Pretoria in the last twelve months, may I say there is no place louder: the largest outdoor nightclub around.
The 7:1 numerical imbalance in fandom is deeply reinforced for an hour as the DJs shriek at the crowd to compare how loud each contingent can shout or sing.
The effect on Saffas in the stands was to harden resolve; isolated again, ostracised, drowned by manic music and dismissive shrugs.
In lower Section D we in green saw each other, nodded, bonded, and found ways to reach for each other for the next two hours.
The audacity of a mark scrum. The ferocity of a tap try. The mindset of a goal from full range in the middle of a storm by the gunslinger brought in from the cold. Le coq bloque heard around the world. The rip of a prop by a nine. The blessed last whistle.
The volume of the cheers and jeers of our French antagonists gently declined from a peak coinciding with a Cyril Baille brace (105 decibels) and petition for an Eben Etzebeth card (120 decibels) to more normal levels (the scrum mark flex by Gaza), then a spike (the futile din during Pollard’s winner) and in the end a tired and docile surrendered silence.
Meanwhile, the DJ kept pumping the jumping tunes, which led to us, the happier and happier Greens, bumping and grinding, twerking and twitching, slapping and dapping, straddling seats as they opened up, and in the end, dominant in this, the Stade de Force.
The game itself was not as it was said to be: six tries in the first half. France built theirs slower and by design. The Boks seized 17 points with cut and thrust in less than 100 seconds. The second half reprised most first halves of Tests and knockouts: guts tight and big balls and then the wait, the pressure, the poison, the errors, and the champagne in the visitors’ coaching box.
The coaches deserved the bubbly: to habituate the rugby world by announcing the team earlier than anyone else for years and then leading into a quarter-final versus the anthemious hosts, suddenly deviating from that practice, after swearing players and staff to secrecy, was a masterstroke, leading France to go 6-2 and waste the grunt when they needed a playmaker.
Frans Malherbe and Franco Mostert just kept hitting rucks like trucks, and the green machine rolled into the final quarter without angst.
The Springboks have looked loose and happy and deadly all tournament, even after losing to Ireland, waiting for a call. The players love their leaders and more crucially, trust in them.
Whilst France built up one bloke so high he was the fractured face of the competition and became so Dupont-dent they are now despondent, the Boks found a way to make every position except No 4 open for competition and put every jersey up for grabs, and at the same time put 20 prior Cup veterans into a gameday squad.
The bench and rotation and veteran-youth choices by Rassie ‘Gees’ Erasmus and Jacques ‘Data’ Nienaber fell just right: minutes managed and structures constructed but spirit and feel still supreme.
A triumvirate of Manie Libbok, Kurt-Lee Arendse and (form 13 in the tournament) Jesse Kriel were not in the 2019 dream but here they were blitzing France as if they had grown up with Damian de Allende in his third Cup and once again a candidate for most valuable Bok, despite the giant claims of Andre Esterhuizen.
Similarly, Jasper Wiese deferred to Duane Vermeulen without a hint of resentment because each man respects the other and knows why the coaches decide. The payoff is that Wiese can now front the same English lads he bowls over at Leicester every week.
No flyhalf controversy: if the issue in 2022 was who Handre Pollard’s backup would be, the new bomb squad is a bench with three Cup-winning game managers.
All the “surprising” picks came through.
Deon Fourie was a battle stat warrior. I’ve never seen a halfback put Dupont in more scrag pressure than Reinach. When a 55m kick in 200 decibels was needed, they had their happy man on to do the job, with a kick they heard all the way down in Montpellier.
Outside the stadium, Saffa boys were bared to their rainbow budgie smugglers, the songs were in Afrikaans and Xhosa, and even if it was only one night in all the nights that were yet to come, what could happen in those other nights to come, depended on what was done on this night.
The French woke the next day on fire about calls made and missed, but as Beckett would urge: “Let not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance, at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?”
South Africa says: “Give us England.” The Cup runneth over.
This was the quarter the French said they wanted. Ask for quarter; no semi given.
Photo: @Springboks/Twitter
