Springboks help South Africa survive another cliffhanger

No-one could dispute that after the grinding winter of 2023, the Lucky Country needed some cheering up. 

It was a time of darkness, rain, floods and scattered mayhem, as well as the usual state-sponsored shenanigans that are now just shrugged off as business as usual.

And then October 7 and the world stumbling closer to the abyss, while a firestorm of hate torches the internet.

We probably owe Siya Kolisi and his team a thank you, then, for an 80-minute distraction which, despite causing unlovely heart palpitations and erratic pulse rates, was some of the finest rugby played anywhere, ever.

Cliffhangers are South Africa’s natural state of being, from the run-up to the 1994 elections to the Rugby World Cup the following year to the night in 2017 when Jacob Zuma’s grip was prised off the presidency. All that was nothing compared with Sunday night. 

Along with fine rugby, the evening also seemed to unleash a delicious madness in the press box as overawed hacks filed copy from the Stade de France.

“They broke his face, and then they broke his heart,” wrote The Guardian’s Jonathan Liew on the crushing sadness of France captain Antoine Dupont trudging off the field at the end. Two weeks earlier, Dupont had been sidelined with a broken cheekbone, an injury that healed just in time for him to lead France against the Boks.

“French bodies dropped to the turf in despair,” wrote The Independent’s Luke Baker. 

Even dour old AP had Dupont slipping down on one knee and tossing his scrum cap on the grass “in despair”.

The hacks and other keyboard warriors are now making much of the fact that three of the four teams going into the Rugby World Cup semifinals this weekend are from the southern hemisphere, as if the bottom bit of the world has some rugby-making magic in its waters. 

Here’s hoping. Meanwhile, can anyone with access to the team please suggest they keep this fine revolutionary phrase handy: “Après nous, le déluge [After us, the flood].”