GAVIN RICH: Boks look stronger than England but play-off ties are odd things

The morning after England hammered New Zealand in the 2019 Rugby World Cup semifinal, I happened to share a lift with several of the winning team’s supporters who were staying in the same hotel.          

“You going to the final?”

“Nah, that will be an anticlimax, yesterday was the final. I am going home.”

It was as though they had already won the World Cup and they behaved like that was the case. It pretty much summed up the atmosphere at the time, and neither was the premature celebration confined to just the England fans. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) even went as far as to put out a message to would-be Twickenham debenture holders to sign up to be stakeholders at “the home of the new world champions”.

Sometimes you can get ahead of yourselves, and that proved to be the case for almost everyone involved with England four years ago. That confident fan in the lift was right — England had indeed played their final.

The current England team isn’t nearly as good as the SA team that beat them in Yokohama in November 2019 was. Many English people wrote that result off as being due to England being complacent and having played their final a week early. There is less chance of that happening in Paris on Saturday, not least because it is England.

The Boks usually get up for England games regardless of the circumstances. Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber are also shrewd coaches and won’t allow their players to be duped into thinking beating England will be a walk in the park.

Nienaber was already talking up England immediately after his team scraped through their epic quarterfinal against France when he said the semifinal will be similar to the four quarterfinals by being close. It shouldn’t be. On current form, England don’t belong on the same field as the South Africans.

However, play-off games are funny things, and England have become the sort of team that could just drag an opponent down to their level and make it close. It’s why it is a bit disturbing when you hear so many South Africans, when discussing a fraught Sunday, the late and tense finish to it and the impact it had on their working Monday, throwing ahead to a final against the All Blacks.

It’s understandable why they do that. There’s been so much talk about two separate imaginary divisions at this World Cup, with the top four occupying a much higher echelon than the other teams. It is also true that because of the ridiculous draw, England haven’t really played anyone yet, which renders coach Steve Borthwick’s claim that his side reaching the semifinal was an answer to the critics a bit silly.

Argentina were spectacularly poor when England beat them, and the Fiji team they scraped through against on Sunday lost to Portugal the week before. They were also lucky to beat Samoa. They are unbeaten though, and while their confidence might be because the lake they think they are looking at is not really water but a mirage, they are a team that has little to lose. They’ve exceeded expectations.

It is also impossible at this point to speculate on just how much Sunday’s emotionally and physically draining game took out of the Boks. A video being circulated on social media of the Bok coaches celebrating at the final whistle summed up the relief the entire nation would have been feeling. For most of the way, it looked like the Boks were going to lose. Winning was emotional for everyone. It was like winning a final.

For much of the year we’ve been writing about the draw and the unfairness of it. One of the fears expressed was that the teams that emerge from the difficult side of the draw might get caught out because of the toll taken on them in getting to the semifinals.

Only the coaches and the players will know just how much Sunday’s match took out of them. So it is going to be interesting to see what selection Nienaber comes up with for Saturday. There is now enough depth in the SA ranks to make some changes to safeguard and freshen up without it necessarily weakening the team.

Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel, for instance, were immense, but if André Esterhuizen and one of Canan Moodie or Lukhanyo Am played against England it wouldn’t alarm Bok fans. And while it wasn’t done in an effort to keep those players fresh, but was rather directed by tactical considerations, with the coaches getting it spot on with the way France tired towards the end, none of the half-backs that played the quarterfinal were on the field for more than 45 minutes. Siya Kolisi left the field early, so did other players who should start against England.

So maybe I’m being paranoid in dwelling on that Sunday morning in Japan. Some paranoia might not be a bad thing though. Losing to England after beating France in such a great game would be a calamity. Just don’t.