So much for logic. More World Cup torture, for England anyway. By the end, it wasn’t even close.
Looking back on it, it seems to me that what England did in this tournament was what France have done more than once in the past. England amazed everyone by beating the All Blacks and thus cleared the way for someone else to win it. Too bad it wasn’t England. I trust South Africans are suitably grateful.
I funked it again, in the sense that I watched it, but couldn’t bear to listen to what the commentators were saying. But on the plus side: my bowels were emptied more thoroughly and rather earlier than usual; I managed to set the date on a newly acquired camera; some washing up got done; various other displacement activities were accomplished, including reading early bits of this rather good book about Shakespeare; I listened more carefully than usual to parts of Record Review, which is still going now (a suitably agonised Shostakovitch string quartet). I mention such personal trivia because this is my blog, but more to the point because I have nothing to add to the rugby expertise that rugby experts will now be lavishing on this event. In a year’s time the only person reading this posting will be me, maybe.
From the look of it, England made too many mistakes, and South Africa just played better.
My thought was that South Africa were not going to try to be pretty and would just try to grind the match away from England. Which is what they did for 60 minutes, and this is where they really won the game.
And of course Australia removed the All Blacks in 2003 and cleared the way for England to win it. That tournament is remembered (at least in England) more for the way England prepared for it and went into it and about the epic final against Australia, but it fits the other narrative too.
Earlier today I wrote a post about rugby for Samizdata, or rather I commented about a Guardian article about the difference between Rugby Union and Rugby League.