It felt like it was going to be New Zealand’s night but South Africa’s sheer determination - and a send off for the Kiwi skipper - turned the final into an all-time classic.
First clues don’t always tell the tale.on this cold and drizzly evening for the World Cup Final between the perennial heavyweight All Blacks and Springboks, things felt a lot more like Dunedin than Jo’burg. In the hours preceding the match the heavens had opened for the game they play in . . . well, you know, and even though things were more dry by game time, the previous conditions had made it justtoo, and the crowd positively pulsed with people dressed from head to toe in all black.
Helping them was a fly-half Handre Pollard who continually turned the All Blacks round with pin-point kicks just behind the All Black three-quarters line, punctuated with long rifling kicks to the corners.
With eight minutes to go, the William Webb Ellis trophy, hung in the balance. Things looked set for the Springboks – now with their bench emptied and fourteen fresh legs on the field, up against as many All Blacks playing a man down for the last fifty minutes – to record their third successive one point win.Time and again, they surged towards the line. Time and again, it was the Boks who scrambled to stop them.
Bravo also, to the magnificent All Blacks who did everything but win, when rugby logic said they should have been blown off the park.
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