France failed to overthrow the Springboks on Sunday at the Stade de France, and left the competition in the quarter-finals as in the last two editions.
A dream brutally shattered, for a tiny little point. Carried by an entire stadium and an entire nation, France was beaten (29-28) by South Africa at the Stade France, Sunday October 15. In an unbreathable match where the tension rarely subsided, the teammates of Antoine Dupont, starting for his return, played eye to eye against the Springboks, but they gave in at the very end of the match.
The French XV, which still led by six points a quarter of an hour from time, stopped for the third time in a row at the quarter-final stage after 2015 and 2019. South Africa, world champion in title, will find England, the only European nation still in the running, in the semi-finals. The XV de la Rose dominated the valiant Fijians earlier in the day.
A scrambled French reception
The Springboks did not come to play a slick game, but to catch the Blues in a well-designed trap, of which they have the secret: taking advantage of the opponent’s errors before physically forcing them to bend.
Despite the French attacks in the first period, rewarded by three tries from the forwards, two for Cyril Baille (4th and 31st) and one for Peato Mauvaka (22nd), Jacques Nienaber’s men perfectly succeeded in their plan: multiply the candles, one of the tricolor weak points. The bet worked, since Kurt-Ale Arendse (8th) and then De Allende (18th) came to steal two balls, which immediately turned into tries.
The XV of France still managed to return to the locker room with the advantage in the score, thanks to a penalty on the gong of Thomas Ramos, who never seemed to enter his match (22-19). In the second act, the Blues did obtain a penalty after a big period of domination, but they came up against the dreaded South African wall. The Springboks, who had failed several times against the French power at the start of the match, shut up shop in defense: no tries conceded, and only two penalties conceded.
The Blues trapped
Little by little, the cunning and roughness of the reigning world champions ended up getting the better of the French. At game time, Eben Etzebeth came to push Matthieu Jalibert into the center to flatten the only try of the second period (67th), while there had been six in the first.
To the French fury at the start of the match, the Springboks opposed their realism, which ultimately proved them right. The French, for their part, left points along the way: those of the countered transformation of Thomas Ramos, and those of several very clear testing opportunities but not materialized during highlights. At times, contentious decisions from referee Ben O’Keefe added further difficulty.
But the reality is cruel: the Blues leave the competition for the third time in a row at the quarter-final stage. “We will try to find the positive. A new generation is here… But the truth is that we failed in the quarter-finals of our World Cup, and that’s hard to digest.”admitted Matthieu Jalibert at the microphone of TF1 at the end of the fight.
“The competition of a lifetime”
There will undoubtedly be a lot to analyze to understand the first significant failure of the Fabien Galthié era at the head of the France team. The Blues did not miss their meeting, far from it, but they seemed to gradually lose the thread of the meeting.
At present, all that remains are regrets. “It’s over, we won’t go any further. Beyond these four years of preparation, it’s the competition of a lifetime. A World Cup in France, we won’t play any more”, conceded third row François Cros. The Springboks, for their part, continue their journey towards a second title in a row: they will have to overcome the obstacle of England, who will be the only nation from the Northern Hemisphere present in the last four.