By beating Wales 19-16 in a close game, South Africa earns a place in the finals next Saturday where they will play England. New Zealand will play Wales on Friday for third place. The game today, like the other semi-final, was largely a defensive one with just one try scored by each side, the other 21 points coming off seven penalties. While this makes the game less scintillating than attacking rugby where a team passes the ball back and forth across the field in successive phases until a try is scored, defensive games also have their own appeal and you get to see some superb kicking in the try and penalty conversions by both sides.
Since both England and South Africa won largely with their defenses, that may portend a defensive game for the final too. But whatever style of play emerges, it is expected to be a close game.
Here are the highlights.
There’s likely a tendency to think that England, who played so well in the weekend, is a strong favourite but I suspect that a game so expertly tailored to disrupt the All Black attack isn’t so useful against South Africa.
I think England is likely to win but would be much amused if they had spent so long, and so successfully tailoring a game plan to win against New Zealand (in the once expected final) that they are left a little at sea with the final they actually have to play.