You reap what you sow. Here in Cape Town, the seeds of poison and disharmony that were scattered last week yielded a considerable harvest that included one of the all-time most controversial Test matches and a crushing victory for the Springboks. The price of success has been considerable.
The message here in South Africa is that the British & Irish Lions are special because they do not come once in every four years, they come once every 12. The inherent suggestion is that this is a great occasion and an uplifting sporting spectacle.
Maybe that would seem more the case if this was not a series played out in a pandemic — if the streets were heaving and the background noise was bars ringing with the joy of song and laughter. Without the backing vocals, though, this was a silent Springbok victory that sapped your spirits.
Then you hear Siya Kolisi, the Springbok captain, talking in his post-match interview about how he hoped that his team’s triumph in the second Test would raise the spirits of his country. So maybe it is uplifting after all. Yet how low was rugby dragged to get there.
That is not to say that the South Africans were anything but the better side. They were comfortably ahead after an hour and out of sight by the end. It was extraordinary and somehow magnificent to see them transform in that second half into a team who matched the legend: brutal, powerful, irrepressibly dominant, uncontainable.
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When we talk about the Springboks, we discuss them with an awe and a sense of fear about what they can do to an opposition. All of that came into play in the second half.
The Lions, meanwhile, cannot hope to win a game they want to contest in the air by picking a back three who cannot catch. Their failures under the high ball were crucial because they gave the Springboks momentum and allowed them to find their old selves. Once that had happened, the game was gone.
Yet everything is connected. You cannot divorce the result from the build-up. The Springbok victory was not isolated from all the bile that preceded it.
Home supporters will argue that what Rassie Erasmus, the controversial director of rugby, achieved was to give the Springboks parity in the referee’s decisions. That is one opinion. What he really achieved was to show us what rugby looks like when you douse it with petrol and then lob in the match.
It was fractious, ugly, controversial and stop-start. Quite possibly, that was exactly what he wanted to achieve.
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He created a situation that was almost impossible for Ben O’Keeffe, the referee. O’Keeffe should have sent off Cheslin Kolbe, he should have given Faf de Klerk a yellow card and there are experts such as Nigel Owens, who was recently the world’s No 1 referee, who say that he should have disallowed one of the Springboks’ two tries too. Despite all that, it is strange to report that O’Keeffe did well — he did well to assert his authority in a game that was verging on anarchy.
The obligation on O’Keeffe, though, was to refer anything remotely borderline to the TMO. When you add in the scuffles that broke out during the first half, you get a staccato 40 minutes of rugby that lasts longer than an hour.
It was not exactly entertainment. It is certainly not how rugby would like to look. It was utterly compelling, though that was only because of the very extreme circumstances.
What it meant was that the game was conducted at a funereal pace that was ideal for the Springboks. What the Lions wanted, and failed to achieve, was a fast-moving match with tempo and high ball-in-play time. What they got was regular stoppages where every break was another chance for a breather.
The Lions wanted to take the Springboks to a place where their superior fitness would tell. The game, however, failed to provide any such aerobic challenge.
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It was not only O’Keeffe who allowed the game to run like this. The Springboks’ dominance also won them the breaks. In the first Test, for instance, they had only four lineouts; in the second they had 12. Likewise, penalties conceded by the Lions rose from eight to 15.
Yet, to give it some context: the average ball-in-play time for a match at the 2019 World Cup was 34min 21sec; the ball-in-play time here was 30min 30sec. This was only half a minute lower than in the first Test, when the Lions’ conditioning was a significant factor, however the big difference was the extraordinary length of the second Test. The 80-minute match lasted 115 minutes. In other words, the players had 30min 30sec when their cardiovascular conditioning was put to the test, but they also had more than 80 minutes of rest in between. And that is without half-time.
To what extent did Erasmus influence the outcome of this game? It is sad enough that such a question should even be asked and, of course, there is no definitive answer.
Maybe it is mere coincidence that, two days after Erasmus’s video release, Kolbe was spared a red. That was in the 24th minute; was that a defining moment of the series?
The problem, of course, is that such a debate devalues the currency of the Springbok victory. The other turning point on Saturday — the one that would preferably dominate the conversation — was the 55th-minute introduction of Lood de Jager.
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His 25 minutes were brimful with typically Springbok heroics. Because of injuries, the forward has hardly played all year: only six games for Sale Sharks, the last of those in early April. He had no right to enter the fray here and cause so much damage, but that is the making of these Springboks. They do sometimes don that green jersey and achieve something a little superhuman.
It was his arrival, along with the rest of the famous Springbok bomb squad, that turned the game. At that point, their pack was returned to its glorious supremacy. Their second try soon followed (the one that Owens said should not have stood) and they were off and away, the Lions beaten.
How simple to be able to tell the story this way, but it is far more complicated than that. That is the price you pay for a victory like this.
Scorers South Africa: Tries: Mapimpi (44min), Am (60). Con: Pollard. Pens: Pollard 5 (3, 31, 70, 75, 80). British & Irish Lions: Pens: Biggar 3 (9, 16, 36). HT: 6-9.
Scoring sequence (South Africa first): 3-0, 3-3, 3-6, 6-6, 6-9 (h-t) 11-9, 16-9, 18-9, 21-9, 24-9, 27-9
South Africa W le Roux; C Kolbe, L Am, D de Allende, M Mapimpi (rep:D Willemse 67min); H Pollard, F de Klerk (H Jantjies 63); S Kitshoff (T Nyakane 59), B Mbonambi (M Marx 55), F Malherbe (V Koch 55), E Etzebeth, F Mostert, Siya Kolisi (M van Staden 72), P-S du Toit (K Smith 21), J Wiese (L de Jager 55)
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Referee B O’Keeffe (NZ)
Assistants N Berry (Aus), M Raynal (Fr)
TMO M Jonker (SA)
