Rugby World Cup: Five things we learned from the final

Springboks’ collective self-belief is off the charts

Many of the South Africa players do not especially shine when playing abroad. But pull them together for a World Cup and their togetherness, energy levels and self-belief are off the charts.

As Jean Kleyn put it afterwards: “Rassie said it a few weeks ago: ‘It is a sign of a really good team if you win the matches you are not supposed to win’. Last week was definitely a match that we won in the last minute, at the death. I think today we earned it, quarter-finals we earned it.

“The belief in the team is immense and I don’t think for one minute we thought we would lose that match.”

Ian Foster still won’t let Ireland series defeat go

It’s the toughest job in rugby, but between them officials should not be wrongly penalising Ardie Savea for not releasing before his attempted jackal, or missed the Faf de Klerk knock-on.

The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times

---

The Counter Ruck: Does rugby need the 20-minute red card?

---

Johnny Watterson: Is this Ireland team in danger of flattering to deceive?

---

Rónan Kelleher: ‘The lineout clicked last weekend, but there was no major revamp’

---

New Zealand head coach Ian Foster understandably had grievances over Sam Cane’s yellow card being upgraded, whereas Siya Kolisi’s wasn’t. But over a year on from Ireland’s series win, Foster was a bit churlish when commenting: “We got the same behaviour from that TMO that we got in the Irish series last year, same TMO. So we expected what we got.”

Springboks show yet again that defences win World Cups

The Springboks have won four World Cup finals out of four, and in three of them, they didn’t score a solitary try. Even the tries by Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe four years ago added varnish after Handré Pollard had kicked them 18-12 ahead.

Beauden Barrett’s 58th-minute try was the first they conceded in four finals. Maintaining the theme of every knock-out game bar the All Blacks’ facile semi-final win over Argentina, by every metric the losing team had significantly the bigger attacking output. Is this really how the game wants to go?

Marx out, marksman in as Pollard plays pivotal role

It could be argued that the defining moment in the South Africa’s fourth World Cup triumph was losing the unlucky Malcom Marx with a knee injury in training and replacing him with Handré Pollard.

The outhalf kicked from three from three, including a 78th-minute match-winning penalty in the semi-final (as he did at the same point against Wales in Tokyo) and four from four in the final, compared to eight from 10 in his 22-point haul in 2019. Pollard has now landed his last 18 kicks in a row at the Stade de France, dating back to 2017!

Pride in the fall for All Blacks

Derided a year ago after losing to Argentina at home, this is not an especially vintage All Blacks team. But they died with their boots on despite playing over an hour of the final with 14 men.

This was the 12th defeat of Ian Foster’s reign, but after his last game in charge he said: “What’s the highlight? Probably today. We lost but as a coach you want your team on the big stage and to put their best foot forward which they did. We didn’t get the result in the circumstances that we had to adapt to, but I couldn’t be more proud.”