As both coaches said, defeat was not the end of the world
If the Springboks go on to make history by becoming the first team to win the Rugby World Cup after losing a Pool game, they may end up looking at the third quarter in Yokohama on Saturday as the most significant 20 minutes of their campaign.
As both coaches kept reminding us before and after the All Blacks’ 23-13 win, the loser was never going to suffer a significant blow to their chances of going all the way.
The result of the game would determine who would gain a psychological advantage should they meet again in the final in November, but little else. And that sort of thing sometimes doesn’t count as much once you reach final time.
A big defeat, though, could have been problematic. The opening game does tend to set the narrative for the World Cup. If you ask players who were involved in previous World Cups, the mood of the public back home, which is showcased by media comment, does have a significant effect.
For instance, some Boks were put out by what they perceived as an unnecessarily negative reaction to their narrow win over Wales in the 2011 opener. In those days, there was an expectation that SA should always beat Wales, but the well-prepared Welsh team went on to make the semifinals.
Given the stage of the Bok development at that point, they were happy just to have beaten Wales, the margin of victory was irrelevant. But instead of the win being applauded, the reaction was negative and the Boks felt they were on the back foot and playing catch-up when they shouldn’t have been.
In 2015, of course, there was no question that the defeat to Japan was a disaster. It did set the narrative, for if you ask Bok fans about their memories of that World Cup, they’d be more likely to recall what happened in Brighton than the fact that the Boks recovered to play in a semifinal, where they lost to New Zealand by just two points.
Given the overly ambitious expectations back home I had the Boks as winners in my internet preview, but expecting them to crush the All Blacks was wishful thinking the mood could have turned ugly had the Kiwis built on their 17-3 lead and won comfortably. A big defeat would have mattered, and the sensationalised attention-grabbing prematch predictions would have been followed by postmortems that would have been over the top in the other direction.
Thankfully the Boks didn’t lose it in that third quarter as some other Bok teams of the past might have. Though there were 10 points in it at the end, it was close enough to be able to point at missed opportunities, at the way French referee Jérôme Garcès tends to bend in the All Black direction, and to believe that with a few refinements and a bit of luck, the result could be reversed in a final.
Had the Boks made use of their physical and territorial ascendancy of early in the game, those who did predict big wins wouldn’t have ended up seeming so off the wall. When the Boks were camping in the All Black half and their opponents appeared to be retreating in the face of the advancing defence and making schoolboy errors, it looked ominous for the world champions. In those early minutes, the All Blacks were doing exactly what the South Africans were hoping they’d do
they were struggling with the Bok kicking game (well, their wings were), they were coming second in the collisions, their first phase was looking creaky.
But small things can make such a difference in a tight game, and whereas the Boks failed to take their chances, the All Blacks took theirs. Once they went ahead, they gained confidence, settled and played smart rugby against a team forced to play catch-up. Seen this movie before? We have, actually, and it was quite a recent one.
It happened in Wellington seven weeks ago, only we didn’t pay too much attention to it as the Boks managed to come back and draw.
It wasn’t a good overall performance from the Boks and there are many questions. Can they continue to back Willie le Roux at fullback; were the defensive and positional flaws of Makazole Mapimpi just a oneoff or symptomatic of something more problematic; and when is Frans Malherbe going to play to his potential?
But the game was close enough to keep the people back home believing, and that’s important to the team.
The feel-good factor of before the game should have been only slightly dented and provided they fix what needs fixing, SA still have every chance of winning the World Cup for the third time.