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ENGLAND will be hurting big time this morning but every cloud has a silver lining and through this tournament they have proved there is more to come. The age profile of the team is strong enough to be competitive for the next four years while they build towards the 2023 World Cup.
You have got to look at it that way and use the experience to make sure when we get to France in four years we don’t feel like this and we are not sitting in such a position again.
But South Africa fully deserved their win. They took ownership of the game and ownership of the Webb Ellis Cup.
England had a setback when Kyle Sinckler, the tighthead prop, had t o go off in t he t hird minute and that handed an immediate advantage to the Boks who got on the right side of referee Jerome Garces at scrum time.
Dan Cole had to come on and you never expect to come on in the third minute of a Test match when you are on the bench. You might prefer it, to get thrown in at the deep end, but if you look at the impact South Africa’s scrum was having on the game, England were struggling.
Then in the 44th minute they brought on two fresh props in Steven Kitshoff and Vincent Koch and their scrum got even stronger.
Tighthead is one of the most attritional positions on the field and it is good to have that guy coming off the bench with 30 or so minutes to go, not 77.
You can’t j ust point at Dan having a bad day though — the scrum as a whole had a bad day.
England had a really strong setpiece going i nto the final but unfortunately — as I said in the week — French referees reward what they perceive to be dominance.
Every referee is a little bit different. Things like angles and technical stuff go out of the window with a French official, but they will reward the team going forward.
It doesn’t matter how or why they are going forward but it is a strong look and that is what happened.
Ultimately one team pushed the other back and South Africa found something that worked for them.
They made it count and England conceded penalties. It was the story of the game. South Africa had everything they wanted out of the match. Faf de Klerk, at scrum-half, controlled the tempo masterfully.
If they wanted to play quick, they played quick and if they didn’t they slowed it right down and they kicked the ball back to England.
They kicked really well and England couldn’t do what they wanted to do.
Going into this game England were the team people were talking about and it is a really good lesson to anyone. You can be the form team in the tournament, the media darlings and everyone is tipping you to win. But on the day South Africa made it their game.
Everyone will be feeling different. There will be anger, there will be sorrow and there will be dejected people. There will be some players who say ‘It is what it is’ and they move on. Everyone deals with it differently — you can’t tell people how to feel but ultimately they need t o know t hat t hey have done themselves and country proud. They can come home with their heads held high.
I t exted Eddie Jones, Steve Borthwick and Owen Farrell before the game to wish them all the best — they have sweated buckets to get where they got to. They all replied, which was great, but everyone will be feeling pretty dejected because these finals you don’t win stick with you forever.
For me they do anyway. They have done everything right to this point. You try to dictate everything the opposition do but unfortunately it happened the other way.
They had months of pre-season training and it has been building up all the time. There is time away from home, time living in a hotel, time living in the bubble so they are going to need a bit of respite to reintegrate back at their clubs.
They have worked so hard but ultimately lost so they need some time. And they have to get used to living at home again.