One side have gone with a 5-3 split on the bench, the other 6-2. One have picked a brilliant playmaker at fly-half over a consistent goal-kicker; the other the World Cup’s leading points scorer. One have talked about being nice to referees and wanting to be liked; the other risked international condemnation by rushing back their best player from a serious head injury in pursuit of victory.
One team is France, one is South Africa. You would never have guessed which was which just a few weeks ago. Answer: South Africa are the first in each dichotomy.
Quarter-final weekend reaches a suitable climax on Sunday night in Paris, when the hosts take on the champions. The Marseille matches will be of great interest and no doubt drama, but it is in Paris where the titans collide, never more than in match four.
The bookies’ predictions taper accordingly to the sharp end of Sundaynight. England are considered eight-point favourites over Fiji, and France just the one over the Springboks. Even that would have seemed unlikely four years ago when the dust settled in Japan. South Africa brutalised high-flying England into submission in the final in Tokyo, before administering the coup de grace with a couple of lacerating tries by the fleet of foot.
Since then, they have worked on both sides of their game, confounding observers trying to categorise them, one minute stressing benches around the world with seven gargantuan beasts and an imp, the next sending the ball to Cheslin Kolbe or Kurt-Lee Arendse or Canan Moodie, their wonders to perform.
Irritatingly for those who hold up South Africa’s infamous “bomb squad” as the embodiment of all that is unholy in the modern game, the Springboks can really play as well. What is extraordinary is the degree to which they appear to be going all out in favour of the beautiful game for their biggest match since Handré Pollard kicked them to the World Cup four years ago.
Pollard, one of the game’s great goal-kickers, had been injured for four months before the tournament started, which must lend some context to the decision to leave him on the bench, but Manie Libbok, who will wear No 10, is no one’s idea of a consistent points gatherer. An uncharitable but realistic analysis of South Africa’s defeat in the pool stages to Ireland could posit the lack of a reliable goal-kicker as the principal cause.
In the absence of Pollard, the Springboks have thrown the tee unconvincingly between Libbok and Faf de Klerk. The latter does not start at scrum-half. Cobus Reinach, the running scrum-half’s running scrum-half, will step up from the bench he shared with those seven behemoths in the match against Ireland. Libbok will presumably take the shots at goal. They must hope he has a good day.
What Libbok will bring, though, is a divine touch as playmaker. South Africa are making all the signals of a side intent on a fast running game. Take a look at that bench for further evidence. The bomb squad has not exactly have been defused, but it now consists of just the four front-five forwards and Kwagga Smith covering the back row. Of the seven forwards on the bench against Ireland, Smith was the one who could have made a fist of playing in the backs, so pace would seem to be the watchword all of a sudden.
France may or may not be scratching their heads over South Africa’s selection. Their history in World Cups of brilliance and farce has been glorious and agonising to behold in roughly equal measure. These days the brilliance is pre-eminent to an almost-exclusive degree. Those familiar with the frailties of French rugby over the years are beginning to wonder whether they may just have overcome their demons.
They are the ones who field a 6-2 split between forwards and backs on the bench, with Sekou Macalou returning to lend an element of athletic versatility. They will field a marksman of deadly accuracy in Thomas Ramos. Antoine Dupont, captain and talisman, returns to the side in that controversial selection, after his fractured cheekbone a little over three weeks ago.
Whether his powers of deception are enhanced or diminished by the scrum cap he is obliged to wear by his surgeon, as well as any hangover from the injury itself, will go some way to determining the outcome. Only a braggart would claim to know what that will be. Expectations have been confounded before a ball has been kicked.
