By the very end the All Blacks were down to 14 men. Not because one of them had been sent off, or because they had run out of fit replacements, but because, well, they felt like it. Scott Barrett had been sent to the sin-bin in the 65th minute for slapping the ball out of the hands of Argentina’s scrum-half Lautaro Bazán Velez, but when his time was up again the coaches didn’t even bother to bring him, or anyone else, back on to the pitch. Apparently, they decided that it would be better preparation for next week to play a man short for the last five minutes. This, then, was a World Cup semi-final that ended up being treated as a practice match.
The All Blacks strung it out into overtime too, pitilessly running through the phases instead of kicking the ball dead as they tried to score one more try on top of the seven they already had. They were, at this point, already 38 points up. “Stop! Stop!” you wanted to holler, “he’s already dead!” That may, in fact, have been what the pocket of Argentinian fans down by the dugout were shouting out. It was the first time in 16 years that anyone has scored more than 30 in a semi-final, since Argentina were beaten 37-13 here by South Africa back in 2007, and the first in 36 that anyone’s won one by that many or more.
