Most of the talk about the 2015 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals before they were played had been about the possibility of France repeating its iconic victory over the All Blacks at Cardiff in 2007. The French ‘off with their New Zealand heads’ possibility was the big story.

>> PUMAS STUN IRELAND
>> WALLABIES SCRAPE PAST SCOTLAND
>> ALL BLACKS CRUSH FRANCE
>> SPRINGBOKS ADVANCE PAST WALES

This is understandable, as that Cardiff 2007 result was possibly the biggest shock outcome in the history of Rugby World Cup finals (Japan defeating South Africa this World Cup must be the biggest ever upset, though).

But the curse of the quarter-finals has had a shuddering impact on other teams with the Webb Ellis trophy in their sights, not just the All Blacks.

The Wallabies, the then defending champions, were bundled out of the 1995 World Cup in the quarter-finals when England’s Rob Andrew booted over a drop goal.

And on the same weekend that the All Blacks suffered their searing Cardiff defeat, the Wallabies were scrummed out of the 2007 World Cup by an England side that had conceded 40 points in the pool round to the Springboks.

The Springboks, too, suffered the curse of the World Cup quarter-finals in 2003 when they were comprehensively thrashed by the All Blacks, and in 2011 when the Wallabies somehow, against the run of play and all the statistics, except for the score line, got up to defeat them at Wellington.

The difficulty for strong teams with coping with the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals is that, generally, they have a comfortable run through the pool rounds in matches they know they will win.

Then, after a month of this festival rugby, they go cold turkey into the knockout phase of the tournament. The intensity is higher. And the nerves jangle a lot more before and during the match.

The knowledge that you are out of the tournament tends to build up such pressure that a poor performance, out of character to the play in the pool rounds, sometimes eventuates. Hence, Cardiff 2007 for the All Blacks.

Matt Burke tells a story about how tough the knockout section of the tournament is on teams that don’t perform. After losing to England in the quarter-final of the 1995 World Cup, the Wallabies flew back home the next day.

They got off their international flight at Perth and headed towards their local connection. They had to walk through through big groups of Wallabies supporters, in their scarfs and jerseys, waiting to board their plane for South Africa, and the finals…

***

To a certain extent, the first quarter-final of the 2015 Rugby World Cup did not quite fall into this usual pattern. Both Wales and the Springboks had to play knockout rugby to get through to the finals.

Wales were in a pool of death with England and the Wallabies. Three into two doesn’t go. Wales defeated England, or more accurately England defeated themselves when they played Wales. This got Wales through to the finals.

Once Wales got this victory, they were able to relax a bit. They knew when they played the Wallabies that both teams were going through to the finals and that the game was really about which section of the finals they would be entering.

So the pressure to win was not quite like what came into play when Wales played England, or when the Wallabies played England.

There was something to play for, of course. The loser, as it happens Wales, moved into the section of the finals that had two two-time Webb Ellis winners, South Africa and New Zealand. France, also in the section, had been in two Rugby World Cup finals. And Wales were a losing semi-finalist in the 2011 World Cup.

In the finals section involving Australia, only the Wallabies have won the Webb Ellis trophy, in 1991 and 1999. Ireland, Scotland and the Pumas have never been in a final. This section is clearly weaker than the section involving the Springboks and the All Blacks.

The fallout, anyway, from all of this was that Wales and the Springboks went into their quarter-final contest at Twickenham having effectively played knockout rugby, tough on the nerves and the body, for nearly a month.

The result was a flat performance from both teams. Flat both in terms of physical energy and, perhaps more importantly, in terms of mental application.

The Springboks were in a position, however, where their injury rate numbers were low, and in the case of Jean de Villiers, the captain, a real blessing in that he demonstrated that he was no longer up to the rigours of Test rugby.

Wales, on the other hand, had suffered numerous injuries. I can’t help thinking that the over-intense training the players were subjected to created some of these injuries, rather like a similar regime for the All Blacks in 2007 led to numerous injuries hampering their World Cup campaign.

If, say, Leigh Halfpenny had been available to play at fullback for Wales, they would have won this match comfortably. I know this is a hypothetical assertion that can never be resolved.

But Halfpenny could have kicked the long-range penalty that Wales declined to convert. More importantly, his defence would have prevented Fourie du Preez’s wonderfully opportunistic (even though it was supposedly planned according to Heyneke Meyer) try that won the match for the Springboks.

And certainly with his skills in running the ball back from kicks, Halfpenny would have been far more lethal than the tentative New Zealander, Gareth Anscombe.

The way Wales kicked the ball back continually in the second half, allowing the Springboks to mount their steam-roller attacks, was an indication that they had run out of energy, mental and physical.

Some of the kicking, too, was unbelievably stupid. Wales would endure the slow torture of the Springboks rolling through their one-off hit-ups in the rugby league manner for about 20 phases. Then Wales would get a turnover. And instead of kicking the ball out and re-setting, or attacking, Wales would kick downfield and allow another series of slow torture one-off Springboks hit-ups until an inevitable penalty was conceded.

Dumb, dumb and dumber! Is this what Warren Gatland really had in his gameplan?

Well into the second half, Wales established a 16-12 lead. Given the attritional manner of the Springboks attack and the policy of playing for penalties, it was clear that any extension of this lead would makes things very difficult for the Springboks.

Then Wales had several lineouts and scrums, with this lead, inside the Springboks’ 22. But not once did they try to knock over a dropped goal.

The point here is that the Springboks had never looked like scoring a try. Their 12 points had come from four penalties booted over by Handre Pollard.

Forcing them to score a converted try just to get on equal terms might have forced the Springboks out of their comfort zone of bashing the ball up the field, and possibly forcing them to make mistakes that would allow for Welsh breakouts.

And even in the beginning of the match, when Wales presumably were less tired than they became, Wales gave away penalties in the 11th, 15th and 19th minutes of play that kept the lacklustre Springboks in the game. It all smacked of a side that lacked the energy to think its way through the match.

As Greg Mumm pointed on The Roar: “Wales gifted South Africa three first half penalties that ultimately cost them the game. What’s more, two of these penalties came within a minute of Wales scoring points themselves, a fact that is sure to weight heavily on Warren Gatland’s mind.”

Wales also bombed a try early on in the match when George North couldn’t burst his way through to the try line with only a couple of players coming across in cover. North managed to run into them and not get his try.

You hear a lot about how powerful North is, but he doesn’t rate anywhere near, say, Julian Savea as a finisher. Against a Wallabies 13, North could not convert an open-field opportunity into a try. And the same situation was stuffed up against the Springboks’ 15 players.

The Springboks carried for 543 metres. Wales carried for 294. The Springboks made 167 passes and seven offloads to the 152 passes and two offloads of Wales. The Springboks conceded 16 turnovers to 13. Both sides scored one try each.

What this tells us is that the Springboks just banged away with their big forwards making small gains before forcing a penalty.

I know Springboks supporters will be angry, but South Africa played Jakeball. This was good enough to win the 2007 Rugby World Cup. There is no flair, no excitement, nothing initiative or dashing in their play. I doubt very much if Jakeball is the sort of game that will win the 2015 World Cup.

It is a rugby crime the way the Springboks keep the ball away from their dangerous and talented wingers, especially Bryan Habana, almost as if this is a tactic. Habana will end his career as one of the greatest wingers to play rugby.

Imagine how much better his try statistics would have been if he had played for the Wallabies or the All Blacks. Unlike Savea, Habana rarely gets the ball from a pass. He is reduced to chasing kicks and trying to make some plays from these scraps.

Admittedly, the Springboks have one of the greatest halfbacks in the history of rugby running in the side in du Preez. And he, almost singlehandedly, is providing some intelligence and the occasional brilliance to his team’s play.

His terrific solo try has kept the Springboks in the tournament. But I was surprised that Wales did not put much pressure on him as he cleared, taking several paces in the Greg manner, from the rucks and mauls. You would think that the way to close down the Springboks is to close down du Preez’s game.

I don’t often agree with Phil Kearns but I thought his answer to the question “Can the Springboks win the World Cup?” was brilliant.

“I hope not,” he replied. A champion reply.

Again, there is a lot in what Chris Rattue (another commentator whose views I invariably dispute) says about the current Springboks that I agree with:

“[The Springboks-All Blacks match] is shaping up as the semi-final between good and evil, rugby and non-rugby.

“The All Blacks will carry more than just New Zealand’s hopes into the final stages of the World Cup. They are, along with Australia, the only team capable of making a difficult game to play thrilling to watch.

Frankly, I can only wish South Africa the worst of luck against the All Blacks, having watched one of the game’s few superpowers scrape the bottom of the rugby tactics barrel against a Welsh team with one foot and a lot of other body parts in a hospital ward.”

***

The point about all this is that the All Blacks went into their match against France under far more pressure, mentally certainly, than the Springboks did in their match against a gravely depleted, injury-ridden Wales side.

I don’t think any of the pundits expected the depleted Wales side to defeat the Springboks. After all, in 30 Tests between the two nations, Wales has defeated the Springboks twice. And never in the Rugby World Cup.

But France have a history of defeating the All Blacks at the World Cup.

You can’t tell me that the organising committee did not have a repeat of the 2007 World Cup quarter-final at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, in mind when they organised the venues where the quarter-finals for this tournament were to be played.

By giving the All Blacks a Cardiff quarter-final, with the presumption that they would win their pool round matches (they have never lost a pool round match), the organising committee was really setting a replay of Cardiff 2007 or, if Ireland were the opponents, a Cardiff 2015 boilover, perhaps.

Don’t for a moment think, either, that the All Blacks were not aware of all the history and hysteria (in the media) that the France versus New Zealand quarter-final was creating.

The starting side was the most experienced side New Zealand has ever fielded, with 988 caps. The centre combination of Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith were playing their 60th Test as a combination, an All Blacks record. Riche McCaw is the most-capped Test player ever and the captain with the greatest number of Test victories.

This was a side selected, coached and prepared at training for this seemingly inevitable crunch match.

It was clear from the beginning of the Test that the All Blacks were determined to win by scoring tries, rather than by kicking penalties. This is where they deserve the sort of praise that can’t be offered to the Springboks.

New Zealand’s centre Ma’a Nonu is tackled during the quarter-final match of the 2015 Rugby World Cup between New Zealand and France. (AFP PHOTO)

The All Blacks ran for 732 metres from 109 carries, with 173 passes. France made 408 metres from 108 carries, with 158 passes.

Although there was a similar number of carries between the two teams, the All Blacks scored nine tries to one, a triumph of attack and defence by New Zealand.

When they scored their second try, the commentator Tony Johnson pointed out that the All Blacks had scored 300 tries in the Rugby World Cup and that no other side had scored even 200 tries! It is this sort of record that creates the iconic image of the All Blacks as rugby super men.

This sort of all-field, all-player attack does not always come off for the All Blacks. But when it does, as it did at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, it was a thing of wonder and lethal beauty. This was rugby of breathtaking skill and speed that makes the game the greatest spectacle of all when played like this.

No other football code can match rugby when it is played the way the All Blacks played it.

I have sometimes compared rugby league, with its confined patterns and action intensified around the ball, with rugby as rhymed couplets.

But rugby, when played like the All Blacks in their opening onslaught against France, is blank verse, Shakespearean in its drama and effect.

The 62-13 scoreline, which included nine tries, surely a record for Rugby World Cup finals, was France’s worst defeat in the tournament, and one of their worst ever since their first Test on January 1, 1906 against New Zealand. In that Test the All Blacks scored 10 tries and no penalties in a 38-8 victory.

A point worth noting here is that France had a well-established national rugby championship in 1906. The first club final, in fact, was played between two Paris sides in 1893 and refereed by Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics.

But it took a side from New Zealand, about as far away as you can get from France, to play a Test match against a French national side. The Home Unions already had their series of annual Test matches under way. But it was a couple of years later before France was invited to join in.

The rugby fellowship offered by New Zealand in playing that first Test has never been forgotten in France. There is a somewhat tragic follow-up in that the iconic New Zealand captain Dave Gallaher, who insisted on playing a Test against France, was killed on the Western Front in 1917.

Gallaher, a noted hard man player in the McCaw mode of wing-forwards, insisted France having the advantage of playing the wind. He then told his players to allow France to score a try after the All Blacks had scored twice. The French players did cartwheels, somersaults and handsprings after Noel Cessieux dived over for his historic try.

France ended up scoring two tries, which was more than any of the Home Unions scored against them. And more than they scored at Cardiff!

Ever since then there has been a special relationship between New Zealand and French rugby. Les Bleus, of all the teams in world rugby, play in a style and spirit that is closest to the New Zealand traditions.

But this did not happen at the Millennium Stadium over the weekend. France played like a team that did not trust its coaching staff and its own abilities. Louis Picamoles disgraced himself with his savage attack on the face of McCaw, something that French teams in the past have indulged in when they believed they couldn’t win the game.

How bad were France? Or is the question really: how good were the All Blacks?

Certainly, it seems as if the coaching tactic of Steve Hansen to force the All Blacks to play under intense pressure in their pool rounds by not kicking and standing very, very flat seems to have produced the desired effect of making them resilient, tough and expansive when they have made space for themselves.

Will the All Blacks defeat the Springboks in the semi-final?

No result is a foregone conclusion, but on this form it will take a mighty team to defeat the All Blacks. But each game is a one-off. Nothing is cut and dried. A team like the All Blacks can’t expect the Springboks to allow them to play with the expansiveness they did against France.

The Springboks, too, play a sort of game the All Blacks find hard to smash. They offer very little by way of turnovers, the favourite opportunity for them to paunch their counter-attacks. The Springboks’ defence, too, will be much tougher than France’s.

It is clear that the memory of the Cardiff World Cup quarter-final in 2007 still sears the All Blacks’ psyche. There was a notable lack of exuberance from the All Blacks when Nigel Owens blew the final whistle.

In knockout rugby, you are only as good as your next match. What happened in a previous match is not of any relevance except, as Richie McCaw (a survivor of 2007 along with Dan Carter) noted, that the win gives the All Blacks another week in the tournament.

My fearless prediction is that they will beat the Springboks and go into the Rugby World Cup final for the fourth time.