What the Boks and French gained from a magnificently brutal battle that summed up why we love rugby

The port city of Marseille is no stranger to debate. Each election cycle this ancient place is used by the governing and the challenger to prove a point.

Ask a hundred French what they think of Marseille and at least seventy will mention crime, with a generous dose of ‘code words.’

To critique Marseille as a seething hotbed of vice, contraband, turf wars and corruption is an extreme form of ‘recency bias.’ It has ever been thus: a first step into Europe.

The Greeks formed the city on the bay 2,500 years ago and it has been the gateway to the continent ever since. The Old Romans, Armenians, Sephardic Jews, Greeks (again), Russians, Corsicans, Turks, Comorians, Maghrebis, Vietnamese, Arabs, Senegalese, and (new) Italians have formed a bouillabaisse of boisterous life, with all the flaws a harbour city hopes to have.

Yes, despite its appearance in the bloodthirsty anthem, it is less French than the rest of French cities but that is the whole damn point of Marseille. To be apart. To hide. To offer a pathway in, and always a route out. One foot in the sea; another in a wild bed.

If you want nice go to Nice. If you want the possibility of a bloody end, bathe yourself in Marseille.

So, that is where the two of the most brutally physical rugby teams – France and South Africa – played out a compelling match. A stadium which could turn into the world’s largest night club, pumping a perfect stew of music and beat into the warm air, using a hundred thousand euros of energy to light the night, and yet, for a critical two minute period, lack even a mobile phone connection from official to arbiter.

Loud does not do it justice. The crowd was in a religious fervor. France is on top of the rugby world. Grand Slam, World Cup host, two of the world’s best five players, about 17 coaches in their box (five of them attorneys), a squad of 45, and even more money than a retired Marseille customs gendarme.

Size, speed, skill aplenty. Wings the size of locks and flanks who play on the wing. A lock who was a flyhalf. A scrumhalf who could play hooker. A prop over 150 kg and three kickers who can smash the ball 70 metres without a runup.

What fun it is to have France good again!

South Africa and France have a deep rugby connection which transcends the now.

Willie le Roux, Faf de Klerk, the ill-fated Pieter-Steph du Toit, Lood de Jager, Frans Malherbe and Vincent Koch all stem from the land of the Huguenots, who fled religious persecution from places like La Rochelle and Montpelllier in the 17th century to the Low Countries, where they melded with Dutch surnamed Erasmus and Mostert and Kriel, and made the long voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, in search of space and terroir.

Faf de Klerk and Antoine Dupont. (Photo by Clement Mahoudeau/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

Their story is told from many perspectives, but it is bound up with the ancestors of the French team (as cosmopolitan as it is, now) and the forefathers of Kurt-Lee Arende, Siya Kolisi, Makazole Mapimpi and Bongi Mbonambi.

Here we are, at this moment in history, and we can see the past, bathed in blood, but we look forward to a future that befits the newer anthem sung before the match.

Nowadays, South Africans (including star Springboks Cheslin Kolbe and Eben Etzebeth) make the reverse journey north to ply their trade in La Rochelle and Montpellier and dozens of other French towns. The French team fits the dream of Macron more than Le Pen: it is a microcosm of mobility, on and off the pitch.

There were five matches on the Bok calendar I mentally circled as the year began. The two All Black bouts, the match in Sydney’s new stadium, Dublin’s Donnybrook and the Marseille street brawl.

I reckoned those five Tests would tell us more about where this team was a year out from a World Cup than the other seven matches.

The All Blacks are always the yardstick, the Wallabies (in Australia) show us where we are wrong and it was the ‘return’ fixture, Ireland is the best attacking side, and France is reported to be the most physical and best defensive team under Shaun Edwards.

I was lucky to be at two of the five, just missing out on Marseille because of the timing of an investigation in Mexico City, another city I love for its surreal layering of impossibility.

Thus, this closed the book on the deck of 2022 for me. I’ll be rapt to watch Eddie’s England of course, but the match against the French was the most important of all.

There is a way to squeeze the All Blacks (Nelspruit) but you have to finish the job (Ellis Park). Take the game away from the Wallabies (Allianz) and turn it into one bar fight after another until you can split and flank. Put pressure on the Irish midfield and take away one half (the Irish right side) of the pitch; but then you have to make your bloody goals.

The French posed a distinct problem. It is the only team who proposed and offered the proposition of physical dominance. Bully the Boks and the Boks are done, no?

It was back in 2017 and 2018 that South Africa and France played (even in those troubled times, the Boks had their number, as Antoine Dupont was not yet Antoine Dupont) so a current measurement was needed.

Full on. Let’s go. Allee. Moer. Smashmouth. Night game. In the city feared by Parisians. Jouet!

We all know the result now. Two tries apiece. The burrowing of a prop on the floor into a try was the denouement of a bitter but entertaining match. The light show had cost too much to have a functioning channel from referee to video man or a replay on the big screen. Both sides can walk away thinking they could win a rematch. In boxing, the sequel would double the box office.

There is no need to recap it. I will give you five things each team loved about their performance and one they will regret. A 5 to 1 ratio is right because let’s get one thing straight: this was a hell of a Test. It is why most of us love rugby. It was magnificently brutal and brutally beautiful.

For France:

Fabien Galthie and his massive coaching panel will love that their team is less Dupont-dent now. The 2021 World Player of the Year has had two games in a row where he was not the star or even on the field for the full time and yet, they won both.

They found a way. Winning is its own separate skill in a team sport. A mentality. A methodology. A mindset. A referee will do odd things. The ball we play with is wobbly and uncertain. To win, you have to develop insouciance. The French used to find a way to lose these kinds of games. Now they discover odd ways to win.

France’s head coach Fabien Galthie looks on during a training. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP via Getty Images)

They had the real test of power. A riled up Bok pack is not an easy thing to face. As the excellent Anthony Jelonch proclaimed after the match: “I don’t think we’ve ever played against forwards who are this strong.” No, you haven’t.

And even if a card cut the Boks to seven forwards and Jasper Wiese’s, de Jager’s and Paul Willemse’s absences cost some of the lustre, height and mass, it was still a proper pack examination of hardness.

The long kick strategy is workable. Time after time, the French kickers boomed it over 50 metres to space or touch. Yes, the Saffa quick lineout and structured run back tactic ate up metres on the stat sheet, but it did not score tries.

The length of France’s punts is truly impressive. They focus on saving pack energy and setting up ambushes in midfield.
They are reading refs well. Having a referee in their coaching staff has clearly helped their players at ruck and in the tackle. The try at the end, no matter how many movements in the bowels of the ruck it took, was perfectly pictured for the referee. They speak softly to the officials. They listen and react quickly.

The worry? Playing against seven forwards for almost 70 minutes and then six for ten should have resulted in clear supremacy. It did not. Plus, it is not a strategy: to hope for a card. PSDT is the last Bok forward you’d expect to win a red card, but his tears on the bench and covered face told the story: he knew he had put his mates into a dog fight without an alpha. France will wonder, in private only, how it would have done with the 2019 World Player of the Year on the pitch for eighty minutes.

For South Africa:

Until you play, you are just projecting. So, the Bok coaches will like how a pack devoid of lineout caller, proper big No. 8 and a blindside (due to the card) seemed to match and shade the French on the gainline.

That sort of real world confidence cannot be manufactured. And it was in France. In a rocking dark heaving stadium full of licorice pastis.

It was in France. And down a man (not just any man) and 13-0 most teams would have caught a hiding. But the Boks dug their way back in and led until the very end. A few strange things happened at the end. None of them were overtly shady or provably dodgy. Just odd. You’d think they are not that replicable, let’s say. The coaches can show the players how they could have won the match, plausibly.

Kicking! Kolbe, Damian Willemse, and de Klerk conspired to be perfect off the tee, from positions even Morne Steyn would have been proud to convert. It was noticeable how much better Kolbe set up to kick. I was surprised at de Klerk’s length.

This has implications for selection. If Handre Pollard returns and starts, but Kolbe is at 14 and Willemse is at 15 and de Klerk is the bench halfback, there is no need to pick a specialist goalkicker on the pine.

Depth developed. 2022 has shown Jaden Hendrickse to be a Test leader at 9, but there are three solid choices now. Wings are three deep with Arendse having no trouble containing Penaud despite giving up at least six inches in height.

Rusty Jesse Kriel finally got game time. An heir to Elton Jantjies is found (Gazza Willemse). The only position still in doubt is third string hooker.

Don’t count out le Roux yet. He may have lost a step, but the old fox is a coach on the field. He can analyse on the spot, in the moment, and can be seen positioning the team off the ball. He never shuts up and is never happy. Don’t be shocked if he makes the 23 in a quarterfinal against this very same team next year.

The bad? A loss. It’s never good to lose. Players like Etzebeth, warrior par excellence, deserve better. There is still a red zone recalcitrance to shift the ball at times. Little moments hold the Boks back. It was a game ripe for winning, by taking the refs out of play.

What can we make of this Bok outfit? Uneven. Experimental. A bit wild. Very hard. Only letting two or less tries in. At the skill positions, quite old and also young. But hard to beat.

It’s a problem for Ireland or France in a quarterfinal because South Africa has more room to improve on attack and has shown even a diluted pack is the strongest either will face.

And France?

They are a big winning team, able to adapt, and athletically gifted. They deserve to be seen as favourites at home. Every team facing them will be the underdog. But they are not in the position of New Zealand in 2011. They are like France in 2011: a good shot for finalist and tough to count out.