South Africa stands alone with its fourth Rugby World Cup

As the 2023 Rugby World Cup championship match entered the final half-minute, the South African Springboks, the defending champions, strapped in for a brutal final scoreline. Against them were New Zealand’s iconic but troubled All Blacks, desperate to achieve a victory that only weeks earlier few would have expected to be possible.

A minor foul forced a scrum – a massive struggle for the ball – and gave the All Blacks the chance to overcome a 12-11 deficit. On the sidelines, Cheslin Kolbe, a Springbok sent off with a yellow card, desperately pulled his jersey over his head. In the crowd, tears streamed down the face of a fan with a South African flag around his neck.

The next 30 seconds would determine whether the All Blacks or the Springboks would become the first team to win four men’s world titles. The scrum started and then collapsed. Seven seconds remained. The scrum reset. One Springbok grabbed the ball and was swamped by the All Blacks to grab. The players fell into a writhing heap. The whistle blew. The game was over. The Springboks had won.

This year should have been different. Before the start of the World Cup in September, the All Blacks were rebuilding and the Springboks had lost important games, while Ireland and France topped the world rankings and looked likely to clinch the World Cup crown, which would have been a first for both. nation.

But over seven weeks of fierce competition, in a demonstration of the enduring strength of rugby’s traditional champions, the All Blacks and finally the Springboks, they dispatched their challengers, making for the most shocking and yet least surprising championship in recent memory .

That was in large part because victory for the Springboks is often about more than just rugby. The first and only time they faced New Zealand in a World Cup final before this year was in 1995, following the collapse of the apartheid regime that had oppressed the country’s black population – a system for which rugby had long been the symbol .

However, after assuming the presidency of South Africa, Nelson Mandela used the Springboks to help unite the nation, under the motto ‘One team, one country’. Their 1995 victory in Johannesburg against New Zealand was a moment of transformative fusion.

“When the final whistle blew, this country changed forever,” François Pienaar, who captained the Springboks in 1995, told The Observer.

That year, four-year-old Siya Kolisi grew up in poverty in a busy South African township. Born to teenage parents and raised by his grandmother, Kolisi as a child encapsulated the precarity of post-apartheid South Africa, which suffered from corruption and instability.

However, as Kolisi grew, he proved to be a gifted rugby player, eventually becoming the first black captain of the Springboks, leading them to victory at the 2019 World Cup, becoming a ‘shining light’ of opportunity for black South Africans, says Gcobani Bobo, a former Springbok and rugby analyst.

That personal and collective history also inspired Kolisi and the Springboks during this year’s tournament. “So many people have lost their lives because I could be free, and because I could put on this jersey,” Kolisi told the BBC in October.

In the quarter-final, South Africa defeated France in a Paris suburb, handing the tournament hosts a devastating defeat. Despite the country’s obsession with rugby, with many top athletes competing for deep-pocketed clubs, France has never won a World Cup title. This year, however, the team was led by Antoine Dupont, arguably the best player in the world. French fans had hoped he could finally get the team over the line.

That hope was jeopardized early on, when Dupont broke his cheekbone in the group stage. In a sign of his determination to win, he donned a protective cap and returned to the field against South Africa.

However, the trademark spark of France’s golden boy could not overcome the Springboks’ mission. After falling just short, Dupont crumbled on the field, covered his face and mourned a French loss again.

After dispatching France, the Springboks’ historic goal also strengthened them against New Zealand, strengthening them as they fought yards from their try line, allowing them to hold on just long enough for Kolisi to become the second captain in history who won two World Cup races. titles.

Bobo recalled how, as a child, his father saw the Springboks as an “untouchable jersey” that symbolized “the old regime.” Now, he said, he is raising his own son. “And the only thing he knows about the Springboks is Uncle Siya, the captain of the world champions.”

For the All Blacks the loss was crushing. The world’s most famous rugby team, New Zealand, has been dogged by atrocious performances in recent years, capped by losses to Ireland on home soil, in Dunedin and Wellington, in 2022 – the first time the All Blacks have lost a home match since 1994.

The losing streak got so bad that the team’s coach, Ian Foster, was almost fired. His job was only saved when the team sent the Springboks to their fortress in Johannesburg shortly after the defeats to the Irish.

Still, New Zealand Rugby, the sport’s national governing body, forced Foster to fire two of his assistant coaches and announced his eventual replacement, signaling it did not expect success at the World Cup. The All Blacks rallied behind their embattled coach and gradually started winning again.

The wins were spotty, marred by a draw against a flailing England and a subsequent defeat to the Springboks. Nevertheless, they had the makings of a challenging comeback. That surge culminated in a quarter-final win over Ireland, symbolizing how far they had come.

Under the leadership of the inimitable Johnny Sexton, Ireland had competed in the No. 1 tournament in the world. After decades of losing in the World Cup quarter-finals, tens of thousands of fans flocked to Paris to watch their heroes break that curse.

Yet the All Blacks could not be overcome. In the end all it took was one Irish attempt. But 37 Irish attacks in the final five minutes of the match saw the All Blacks hold firm, collecting a whopping 100 tackles in the final quarter, as they rebuffed every attack and Sexton, who had said he would retire after the tournament, had to be sent off the field. the last time.

As he did so, his son walked with him, trying to reassure a tearful father whose professional hopes had been crushed. With his arm around him, Sexton’s son leaned forward and said, “You’re still the best dad.”

Later, the All Blacks dominated their semi-final with Argentina, so confident of victory that they opted to fight while being one man short at the end, seemingly to minimize the risk of a player getting injured. The decision turned out to be ironic. In the team’s subsequent clash with South Africa, All Blacks captain Sam Cane collided with the head of a Springbok and became the first player to be shown a red card in a World Cup final.

With Cane sent off, his team had to battle against a player disadvantage for 51 minutes. Even then, New Zealand kept pushing, throwing black waves against green walls until its efforts produced a try: the first ever scored against South Africa in a World Cup final. Suddenly the title was within reach: one last chance to vindicate a team and a coach once maligned as the worst in New Zealand’s modern history.

But in the clash between the All Blacks’ quest for redemption and the Springboks’ drive for history, South Africa won. The All Blacks botched their kicks, missed their penalties and squandered their chances.

When the game ended, they stood motionless and disbelieving amid scenes of South African jubilation. On the sidelines, Cane folded his hands over his mouth and struggled with the loss of his chance for revenge.

“There is a lot of heartbreak in the warehouses at the moment,” he said afterwards at a press conference, referring to his teammates in the dressing room. He added: “It is something I will unfortunately have to live with forever.”

“Everyone at the All Blacks is motivated by history,” says Scotty Stevenson, a New Zealand rugby analyst and biographer of several All Blacks. But the disappointing defeat, he said, shows the All Blacks “don’t dominate like they used to” after decades of being the best in the world.

As New Zealand mourns its lost supremacy, the Springboks savor a win that carries their country with them.

“So much is going wrong in our country,” Kolisi told ITV. “We are the last line of defense.”