The moment the Boks knew 'the French can't stand up physically to them': Victor Matfield

Former South Africa captain Victor Matfield believes the Springboks’ recent 32-17 victory over France surpassed their 43-10 win over the All Blacks earlier this year.

Rassie Erasmus’ produced the most emphatic performance of the Quilter Nations Series to date in Paris, made all the more impressive by the fact that they were reduced to 14 men for the second half following a red card to second-row Lood de Jager.

Many would have thought that Les Bleus would pull away after the break with a man advantage following a confrontational first half, but it was the contrary, as Fabien Galthie’s side dramatically wilted, allowing the Boks to score 19 unanswered points in the final 16 minutes.

Though it wasn’t until the 64th minute before the visitors first took the lead, 2007 World Cup winner Matfield actually believes the decisive moment in the match came in a scrum in the first half, when “South Africa knew that the French can’t stand up physically to them.”

Matfield pinpointed the scrum after 30 minutes, the fourth of the match, shortly after Gerhard Steenekamp had come on, as the defining moment, which gave the Springboks the penalty advantage and the platform for Cobus Reinach to score his solo try. This, however, had come 20 minutes after the Boks had already produced a penalty-winning scrum, which Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu kicked three points from.

“I look at this team and I think they can’t surprise me more, they can’t do better, and then they give a performance like this,” Matfield said on the Rugby Rivals Podcast.

“I do believe this was a better performance than the one we saw in Wellington against the All Blacks. How the guys came out in that second half, Malcolm Marx did so unbelievably, Jasper Wiese standing up, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu moving to No.15, Manie [Libbok] coming on. Yes, there were a few mistakes, probably not the best we’ve seen from Sacha, but still, at the right time coming through and just dominating.

“I thought that scrum, the scrum where we got that big scrum 30 minutes into the game, that just changed the game. All of a sudden South Africa knew that the French can’t stand up physically to them. Then they started controlling the collisions as well, and game over. But what a game by South Africa.”