RWC 2011

[muzzington]

That's very close to a ban

[maccatak11]

Woo hoo! What a game!

[Bacon]

Woo hoo! What a game!

Now for the Dogs to steal a victory!!

[trishan]

Very dissapointed as you can imagine. Boks were the better side, but time and time again Australia had the rub of the luck. The Australian try was created by a player in an offside position kicking the ball out the side which the ref missed.

Ah well, that's rugby.

[trishan]

That's very close to a ban

[David]

Very dissapointed as you can imagine. Boks were the better side, but time and time again Australia had the rub of the luck. The Australian try was created by a player in an offside position kicking the ball out the side which the ref missed.

Ah well, that's rugby.

Do you even realise now much you blame umpires when a team you follow loses?

[trishan]

Very dissapointed as you can imagine. Boks were the better side, but time and time again Australia had the rub of the luck. The Australian try was created by a player in an offside position kicking the ball out the side which the ref missed.

Ah well, that's rugby.

Do you even realise now much you blame umpires when a team you follow loses?

Not the umpires fault. He was blindsided and I had the benefit of the replay. Just bad luck.

[maccatak11]

I don't think the better side fumbles at least three golden try scoring opportunities, or throws forward passes when they have a clear overlap. If SA couldn't make any of those opportunities count, then they don't really deserve to win. I think the Aussies defended pretty bloody well given the weight of possession that SA had

[trishan]

I don't think the better side fumbles at least three golden try scoring opportunities, or throws forward passes when they have a clear overlap. If SA couldn't make any of those opportunities count, then they don't really deserve to win. I think the Aussies defended pretty bloody well given the weight of possession that SA had

Springbok lock Danie Rossouw was a bewildered and confused figure on Sunday night after his team bowed out 11-9 to Australia in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup.

Rossouw was penalised by referee Bryce Lawrence on the advice of a touch judge, who said he had played Wallaby No 8 Radike Samo in the air, a charge that Rossouw vehemently denies.

But the result left the Bok dream in tatters as they gave up their World Cup crown despite being the better team in every facet except the scoreboard.

“It’s a difficult one, I don’t know. He said I sacked him, I thought you were allowed to sack a player but he gave a penalty. I did not play the jumper in the air,” a distraught Rossouw said.

“For me personally it is devastating.”

Rossouw said the biggest hardship was that this team, which had achieved so much together, would now be going their separate ways.

“There are a lot of guys I made friends with, guys I wasn’t friends with that I’m now friends with. We’ve become a brotherhood. That’s the saddest thing for me, we became big mates, and now it is all over.

“I’m leaving for Japan. I still have test ambitions. I will see if I can get myself in good shape over there.”

Asked about man-of-the-match David Pocock’s performance, Rossouw was mum.

“I really don’t want to comment on that,” he said.

[trishan]

If ever a team dominated a game and deserved to win but didn't it was the Springbok team that was edged out 11-9 by a combination of Wallaby resilience, some decidedly questionable refereeing and just plain bad luck in their World Cup quarterfinal at Wellington Regional Stadium on Sunday.

Lock Danie Rossouw was adjudged to have tripped up an Australian lineout with nine minutes to go, and it cost the South Africans the game. On the recommendation of the assistant referee, the match official Bryce Lawrence awarded the penalty 15 metres inside the field of play. James O’Connor kicked the goal that broke the South African hearts.

It was a bizarre match. The Boks dominated every single statistic that should have been relevant -- the scrums, the lineouts, the tackle count, the kicking game. But what they didn’t dominate was the scoreboard. That happens sometimes, but probably never to the extent that was the case this time in such an important game.

For the record, the Boks had to make just 53 tackles against the Wallabies’ 147, they stole five Wallaby lineout balls without conceding one themselves, they missed 11 tackles to the Wallabies’ 13, they enjoyed 56% of the possession and 76% of the territory.

In the first half, after which they trailed 8-3, they had 84% of the territory. But it was in the second half that they were at their best, and looked like taking control of the game on several occasions. As anticipated the addition of Bismarck du Plessis and Francois Hougaard added energy after half time, but that is not to say that John Smit and Bryan Habana did not play their part.

Although Du Plessis should possibly have been introduced much earlier as his fetching abilities were needed when Heinrich Brussow went off injured in the 22nd minute, Smit did what he was selected to do as the lineout and scrum plans were executed with precision and power.

The Boks had trailed the whole game, but when Morne Steyn slotted a drop-goal in the 59th minute to put his team ahead for the first time, it looked like the Boks were on the way to victory.

After that they went straight back onto the attack and again camped near the Australian line, pressurising the Wallabies into mistakes. From one of those mistakes Fourie du Preez gathered and for all the world looked like he was going over the line only for the ball to spring from his grasp in the act of scoring.

How many times will Du Preez, one of the world’s great players, let that moment haunt him? Had he scored there, the Boks would probably been out of sight and the match won. Not that he should be blamed for the defeat, for in truth where it really all went wrong was when the Boks conceded a try in the seventh minute that they really shouldn’t have.

They had shut the Wallabies out in the first minutes, and it was the first Wallaby visit to their half, with a long kick setting up a lineout five metres from the corner flag. The Boks took the lineout ball comfortably enough, and Schalk Burger ran the ball up intending to set up a recycle from which Du Preez or Steyn would have cleared.

QUESTIONABLE REFEREEING

However there were no cleaners up with him and the ball inexplicably rocketed out the side of the loose scrum -- it looked like it could have been the work of a hand -- and the Wallabies were onto the opportunity in a flash, with skipper James Horwill the man with the momentum to carry him over the line.

O’Connor missed the conversion, but Jannie du Plessis missed a tackle on Kurtley Beale a few minutes later, and the Wallabies were back in the Bok half. From this strong territorial position they forced the penalty that O’Connor kicked on the quarter hour mark to make it 8-0 to Australia.

While the Boks were smashing the Wallabies at forward, they did struggle to get their game to flow with any kind of efficiency, and this was much the reason they lost as the at times questionable refereeing of Lawrence, who allowed David Pocock to get away with murder at the breakdowns.

The Boks just weren’t organised enough in the first half going into the breakdowns, and this cost them momentum and prevented them from taking play beyond third or fourth phase beyond maybe on a couple of occasions.

Skipper Smit though was right afterwards when he said it was disappointing that the breakdowns were not refereed equally, and he did speak to Lawrence on a number of occasions about it without getting any joy. Normally the attacking team gets the benefit in the breakdown interpretations, but this was not one of those days.

Sadly for the Boks, this was a quarterfinal, in other words a game where there is no comeback, and there really is no point in complaining about it. They will be flying out for home in a couple of hours, and they will do so as a team that although they lost can still hold their heads high for the pride with they played in this quarterfinal.

It looked like being their day when they started strongly, pushing the Wallabies back at the first scrum and generally gaining the forward ascendancy they needed if they were to win the game against a Wallaby team so noted for its running game.

But while the Wallabies looked rattled, they were able to settle down after that fortuitous first try, and with the Boks chasing the game, they knew a solid defensive effort was what was needed. They produced that.

The Boks might have regretted not kicking for poles when they received their first penalty in the game, which came as late as the 26th minute, but they were still the next to score as Steyn kicked one from nearly in front in the 37th minute. The flyhalf did miss one long range one before that though.

There was also a penalty advantage for the Boks in a kickable position that was wasted when they were turned over metres from the Wallaby line in the 34th minute.

Jean de Villiers was probably the best Bok back on attack, with Patrick Lambie turning in an accomplished display at fullback and Jaque Fourie being his usual Herculean presence all over the field, both on attack and defence.