SOUTH AFRICA (12) 23
Try: Du Preez; Penalties: Pollard (5); Drop-goal: Pollard
WALES (13) 19
Try: Davies; Conversion: Biggar; Penalties: Biggar (3); Drop-goal: Biggar
If ever there was a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man”, it was six minutes from the end of a spine-tingling World Cup quarter-final at the home of rugby yesterday.
That was when Springbok captain Fourie du Preez darted around the blindside of an advancing Bok set-scrum and dived over in the corner for what could be one of the celebrated tries in SA rugby history.
It won the Boks the match, sealed them a place in the semi-finals and probably saved the job of coach Heyneke Meyer, who for so long has insisted that Du Preez was the key to Springbok glory, that the team marched to his drumbeat, and indeed prophetically said midweek that the greater the pressure, the better Du Preez played.
And when Du Preez scored, after the Boks had trailed 18-19 for 20 edge-of-the-seat minutes, Meyer almost spontaneously combusted in celebration.
The Boks kept their nerve at 23-19 to triumph in a game that will go down as one of the tightest and closest in World Cup history.
It was that tense. Call it what you like – an arm wrestle, trench warfare … it was two proud teams slugging it out to the death.
Last week, Meyer, fizzing with passion, invoked historical and sporting greats to describe what was in store in this match, from Alexander the Great to Boris Becker and Mike Tyson. He did well not to mention Napolean because with seven minutes to go, Meyer was on course for his Waterloo.
The coach’s players certainly did not make it easy for him, inching Meyer ever closer to a pitch-side coronary with their penchant for making lives difficult for themselves.
Time and time again the Boks lost the ball in contact or were turned over at the breakdown.
They would do good work to earn a penalty for Handré Pollard to goal, then concede one for Dan Biggar to pull three points back.
And so the game progressed on a knife edge. It was nip and tuck all the way, with the set pieces just about even and the Welsh having an edge at the breakdown where Sam Warburton showed why Meyer last week rated him equal to Richie McCaw.
The Welsh captain’s decisive performance at the breakdown almost won his team the game, especially when, in the second half, Pollard fluffed two kicks at goal that he ordinarily would have kicked with his eyes closed.
South Africans around the world would have had that sinking feeling, which deepened as the second half wound down to its inevitable climax.
The Bok supporters in the 79500 crowd knew the Boks needed a hero, a player who could produce a moment of magic to turn the deadlock in their favour…
The first half had seen Pollard land four penalties and the Welsh scoring a well-taken try when Gareth Davies was the beneficiary of a speculative Biggar up-and-under that Willie le Roux could not deal with. It landed perfectly in Biggar’s hands and when he off-loaded to Davies, the scrumhalf had a clear dash to the line.
The 10-9 lead for the men in red was short-lived, though, when they immediately went offside at a ruck, and Pollard was once more on song, landing his fourth penalty for a 12-10 lead, but Biggar had the last say in the half when he slotted a fine drop goal with the final action of the half.
The Boks should have regained the lead just two minutes into the second half but Pollard uncharacteristically pushed a penalty attempt wide, and that hurt even more when the Boks yet again conceded a penalty at the breakdown, and Biggar nailed the kick from 40m.
Ten minutes of mostly unrelenting pressure from the Boks could only produce a drop goal from Pollard to pull his team back to within a point of Wales at 15-16.
As the game entered the final quarter, Pollard landed his fifth penalty but, almost impossibly, the Boks give the lead straight back to Wales with a penalty conceded from the kick-off. And so it was set up at 19-18 to Wales with 17 minutes to go.
The Boks kept digging ever deeper and with the deserved Man of the Match Schalk Burger in the vanguard, they drove the Welsh slowly but inexorably back towards their line to set up that key scrum. Every soul in the stadium knew that scrum was the pivotal moment of the match. It was like a coin being tossed up into the chilly London air – which way would it fall ...?
The Sunday Independent