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Pieter-Steph du Toit dismisses All Blacks as Boks' hardest RWC match
By Josh Raisey
South Africa faced the toughest World Cup campaign last year that any team has ever had, let alone any team that has gone on to win the competition.
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Though they did not actually win every game (losing to Ireland in the pool stages), facing five of the top six teams in the world is a fixture list few teams, if any, are likely to face again at a World Cup.
To beat France, England and the All Blacks in the quarter-final, the semi-final and the final all by a solitary point makes the achievement all the more staggering.
It is unlikely that the Springboks squad will agree with each other over which was the toughest match in their run as each game threw up different challenges. The quarter-final against hosts France was played at a ferocious tempo, the semi-final against England was completely different but the Boks looked in danger, while any match against the All Blacks in a World Cup final is going to be hard-fought.
But Pieter-Steph du Toit pinpointed the encounter with Les Bleus as his hardest match of the World Cup campaign. However, it was not necessarily what happened on the pitch that made it so tough, but the drama surrounding the fixture.
“For me personally, it will be the France game,” the flanker said on RPTV’s The Big Jim Show recently.
“For me mentally it was tough as well. I got a red against them a year before- an accident happened.
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“Especially the hostile environment with coaches playing mindset games with you. You think about the families, are they going to be ok? Have you got security there? You never know what’s going on in a rugby game- you get someone who’s so upset after a team lost that they’ll do anything for the team. They don’t think clearly.
“Of course, after that game I just put my hands up in the air in relief to be able to win that game.”
The game where it felt like RSA was going to lose the most was the England game in my view. Heart in throat after the Farrell drop-goal…Amazing that the boks overcame 3 times in a row…not likely to be repeated ever in my view
Also the boys looked emotionally spent in the England game in the 1st half
That said, why was World Rugby and Beaumont allowed to stack the pools in England’s favour? Toughest opponents on that side of the draw were Fiji, Argentina (implode central) and Auckland Girls 2nd team
well - they only played against 14 men and had the TMO team on their side - and still should have lost… so actually that makes sense.
That’s nonsense. Apart from the fact that two SA players were sinbinned, one of NZ's tries came from one of the most blatant knock-ons l’ve ever seen not getting blown up.
Every replay showed the ball had gone forward more than a metre on the final pass, yet neither the ref nor the TMO picked it up.
So don’ talk about ref bias - SA caught every bit as many refereeing raw deals as NZ in that game.
It’ll all be ok someday my friend…I promise😂 you need time to heal because I can see it is still quite raw. It’s only been 197 days since the final anyway🤭
Schadenfreude 😃
Lol, i love sour tools like you. You make my day.
what’s your address, I’ll send you a box of tissues as well..
😂
Yeah we shouldn't have poked the bear! We should have given them that series win in NZ and taken them by surprise instead 😆
personally I’d go with :
1. France
2. NZ
3. England
4. Ireland
5. Scotland
Yeah, interesting. I just feel the England game was torturous. Totally outplayed and out thought for about 70 minutes. Tactically, England got it spot on in the rain and for the Boks to find the resolve to overturn 9 points in 10 minutes was remarkable.
In the NZ game, the Boks were comfortable for the majority of the game until the momentum swung with Siya’s yellow. Never got the momentum back so, yeah, it was tough.
No arguments about the toughest, though. France by a mile.
Of their 5 big matches in RWC Scotland and NZ were the easiest.
They took a 12-3 lead against NZ and after the red decided it was best to hold the lead and take chances that came. None came and it was tight but they dug a lot deeper in the other two knock out matches. They had trounced NZ in Twickenham in a fixture that NZ must now regret. Psychology was clearly with SA in the final as a result.
The words of an utterly deluded Saffa. Boks could barely hold on against 14 men in the final. They played the ABs kids in Twickenham, again, against 14 men. Winners of the Charity World Cup, South Africa!
Yes, 100%. I would say in terms of tough games it was:
France
England
Ireland
NZ
Scotland