By Spiro Zavos
September 23rd 2007 @ 5:46am
RWC: The Boks win one of the great rugby matches
South Africa 30 – Tonga 25
England 44 – Samoa 22
The French lady sitting beside in La Place de la Comedie at Montpellier watching the enthralling South Africa-Tonga match was dressed in Tongan colours, with her faced painted in red and white stripes. Her daughter, who looked to be about 8 years old, was similarly dressed and painted. Throughout the match they kept up a series of yells, shrieks and calls, ‘allez Tonga!’ and ‘allez les noirs.’
I don’t know how impressed the Tongan would be to be called ‘blacks’ but the intent of the mother and daughter was clear. They were for Tonga, as were most of the crowd at the ground and at Montpellier. Curiously, a little boy, about a year or so younger than his sister played studiously with his Lego blocks while the women of the family cheered on the torrid Tongans.
It’s to the credit of Tonga that in the end Jake White had to bring out the big artillery with five changes, bringing in members of his number 1 side to replace the weaker number 2 team players. The move worked with two sensational tries by the Springboks. But again to their credit, the Tongans came back and even though fresher number 1 team players were on the field, Tonga almost stole the match on time. It was a pity that the very good youngish English referee, Wayne Barnes, called time on a lineout 5m from the Springboks tryline with the television time showing several seconds of place left.
The play of Tonga against South Africa, and against England next weekend (I have no doubt) makes a mockery of the IRB’s intention to reduce the number of teams in a RWC tournament from 20 to 16. Would Tonga – or Georgia – be in this tournament if it had been a 16-team affair?
Michael Jones was right that the difference between Samoa and England was Jonny Wilkinson. Wilkinson is not just a kicker, although he does kick and awful lot, too much for my liking. I’ve always believed you can’t score tries when the other side has the ball. But most of Wilkinson’s kicking is astute and well-judged, which is more than can be said for the rest of the side.
As I watched the world’s largest rugby community, in terms of people playing the game, struggling to defeat one of the world’s smallest rugby communities, and doing so in a boring, brain-dead, contempt-of skill manner, the anger grew in me that journalists like Stpehen Jones of the UK Sunday Times have had the cheek to condemn southern hemisphere rugby as not being the real thing, too air-fairy, too roboticc etc etc etc …
Jones and his ilk have a lot to answer for for the decline of rugby in Britain. His stupid contempt of the athletic, running game played in the southern hemisphere has meant that journeymen players in Britain whose main thumping is banging their chests during the national anthem are promoted as world-beaters. When they come up against opposition which is not got the northern hemisphere disease of the plodding, these journeymen are revealed for what they are, mediocrities.
It seems inconceivable that Tonga could knock England out of the finals. But on the showing of this weekend’s matches such an upset is possible. Let’s hope it happens.
Your industrious reporter can report that on his way to La Place de la Comedie he walked beside Stephen Larkham for about 20m. The great five-eights looked to be walking without any pain or resistance from his knee despite the operation on it being only a week old.
And then coming back to the hotel asfter watching Argentina thrash Namibia, the huge frame of Lote Tuqiri was spotted making his way back to his hotel. Time: 10.30. So the curfew was being honoured.
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(4)
Sam Taulelei said | September 23rd 2007 @ 1:26pm | Report comment
Hi Spiro
My thoughts on the SA v Tonga match. The best game in the tournament so far, and on a par with the magnificent match between Samoa and England in 2003. Great to see that unlike England a week earlier Tonga attacked with purpose, skill and strength. This was the first game for many of the second string Springboks and they definitely played like it, there is a gulf of difference in standards between their strongest side and their next best, this was also borne out earlier in the year when a second string selection was unconvincing in beating Samoa at home.
Pretorius missed penalties he would normally kick and Willemse bombed a couple of gimme try scoring opportunities that would have put the game beyond reach of the brave Tongans. The intensity and pace increased when Jake White injected his best players from the bench in the second half and in a 15 minute burst they showed their quality with some magnificent attacking play and three quick tries. Steyn is proving himself to be a very fine player and in hindsight de Villiers injury may prove to be a blessing in disguise for the Boks.
But these Tongans were not to be denied and although under pressure in the set pieces their work at the breakdown, particularly by Latu and Maka turned over a lot of ball as well as recycling their own ball quickly. I was surprised at how vulnerable SA were when Tonga used the pick and go at the rucks and made a lot of easy metres with their direct running and interpassing.
I leapt out of my chair when they scored the last try of the match placing them within a converted try of snatching the game from SA. Did I dare to dream? It wasn’t to be but Tonga won many admirers with their daring play and never say die attitude. It defies belief that if they pulled off an upset win they would have been the only unbeaten team in the group and possibly go through to the quarterfinals as top qualifier. Who could have ever imagined that?
SA were the better team and showed with their best players on the field how much their attack has improved since Eddie Jones has been associated with the team. I was sceptical about how much he could influence the Boks with the limited time he had with them however as an outsider looking in, his addition is the only change that I can see to the team and haven’t they played so much better because of it.
There has been a lot of discussion that because SA lack a top quality five eighth that it will be their undoing in the latter stages, however with du Preez in the form of his life and Steyn’s improvement and added kicking ability, the Boks may not suffer as much as once thought by playing Butch James. Pretorius has run out of time to force his way back into the team.
I’ve read Stephen Jones columns in the Times for many years and he has a gift for rankling rugby fans south of the equator with his dismissal of Super 14 and Tri Nations rugby. Initially his criticisms were spot on as NZ, Aus and to a lesser extent SA had moved away from a strong forward base in favour of playing open entertaining rugby which appealed to a wider television audience. Eventually this created a disparity between Super 14 rugby and test rugby and the balance in power had shifted north. The attritional nature of premiership rugby was seen as more demanding and better preparation for the realities of test matches.
At this world cup we’re seeing that the SH teams have learnt their lessons well and combined the forward power required with the athleticism, skill and speed of their players, this is particularly evident at the breakdown. Even the Pacific island teams are showing up their NH opponents with their aggression and play at the breakdown. The All Blacks led the way over the past two years with their counter rucking and now their SH counterparts have caught up. If there is no chance at effecting a turnover then only a couple of forwards will enter the breakdown and the rest will fan out into the defensive line but once they get a sniff of a turnover watch how they all rush in and attempt to drive over the top and win the ball back, it’s not just about strength and speed but also about reading the situation and communicating. That’s why the NH teams appear to be very ponderous in comparison as they aren’t recycling their ball quick enough for their backs and aren’t quick or skilled enough to react to turnover situations and take advantage of them.
Fortunately for Europe the performances of their national teams isn’t indicative of the strength of their domestic competitions and they have some wonderfully talented players that would probably fare better playing a different style than what is currently in vogue. Maybe the new laws will assist them. It won’t take that long for these lessons to be digested and learned and the benefits may be seen as early as the next Six Nations championship.
England were an improvement on last week but not by much, it was interesting listening to the ITV commentary team state that England were no longer a tier 1 team, they lacked world class players and even the great Jonny Wilkinson was not the same player he was four years ago (injuries notwithstanding). Brian Aston is in an unwinnable situation as he knows he didn’t select the players to play the type of game he wants them to play and the game has changed markedly since their success in Australia and many of those same players are four years older, slower and less dynamic. It would be fantastic for the world cup if Tonga were to go through with SA to the quarterfinals and I’m sure John Connolly will be pleasantly surprised to be playing them instead of England.
My bold predictions for the last eight are : SA, Tonga, Australia, Fiji, NZ, Scotland, Argentina, France
Chris Beck said | September 24th 2007 @ 8:43am | Report comment
“Contempt-of-skill” is a wonderful phrase, one with which I completely agree.
10-man rugby is, to me, very unattractive. It is devoid of imagination and excitement, and as such isn’t going to attract people to the sport or retain them in the long term.
This lack of imagination is what we see in North America every time the NHL adds a team or two – there is an “expansion draft” whereby existing teams are allowed to protect their top 15-18 players and the rest are made available to be selected by the new teams. The new teams are thereby forced to play a conservative, defensive, unappealing style of play because they don’t have the talent base that existing teams are allowed to retain. Such teams can’t be blamed for adopting such a style of play – what other options do they have?
In rugby, and particularly in the Rugby World Cup, there’s no excuse for such a mindset.
A way to fix the problem, of course, is to make kicking at goal less attractive, by either widening the differential between the worth of a try and the worth of a penalty or drop goal, or by decreasing (drastically) the opportunities available for teams to take a shot at the goal posts.
andrew richards said | September 24th 2007 @ 10:58am | Report comment
Yo
Tonga & the ‘Boks was a wonderful game by both teams and as the Spiro says a reminder that we must fight to prevent the no. of teams participating in 2011 being reduced.I think the threat is real as NZ may struggle to have sufficient facilities for 20 teams.
Good luck to Tonga against the dreary Poms!
matty said | September 25th 2007 @ 1:19am | Report comment
Spiro, I was lucky enough to be in Paris this weekend and watched the Tonga game on the big screen outside the town hall. As the crowd grew, so did the sniff of the upset and the few Bok supporters scattered through the crowd shook their head more and more as the remarkable Tongans seems to constantly ratchet up their performance as the stakes were raised. Allez Tonga was certainly the phrase of the afternoon. That game certainly raised expectations for the following games that, along with some bruised poms, the outcome of the match could be the upset the crowd was looking for. Unfortunately that was not to be, but it made for fun rugby watching as a neutral observer. Interestingly, there didn’t seem to be a single English shirt in the few thousand people there – usually there’s always a few that pop up no matter where you watch an England rugby game – I guess they were expecting the worst.