France ended a 21-year drought against the Springboks at the Stade de France, securing a tense 21-19 victory in a dramatic Nations Championship encounter. Despite being outperformed in the scrum and lineout throughout the final 30 minutes, the hosts held on by their fingertips to defeat the world champions on home soil. Only by two, 21-19, and hell, they were hanging on by the fingertips for the final 30 minutes, but they have, at last, beaten the best team in the world in their national stadium. Lost almost every scrum and which was missing a host of players, and after all that they did it with a team that had barely won a lineout.
Head coach Fabien Galthié had dismissed pre-match talk of mind games with South Africa counterpart Rassie Erasmus as “comic-book stuff.” While Galthié named Antoine Dupont at fly-half, the star scrum-half played in his customary role, with Maxime Lucu acting as the primary playmaker. The match itself lived up to the pre-game spectacle, which featured a high-tech drone show and a choir performance. According to galthié had, Dupont was going to start at fly-half and, sure, he wore No 10 on his back, but he played the game in his usual position. It was his understudy Maxime Lucu who switched positions to play first receiver. The pre-game was a full Cecil B DeMille production, with fireworks, flamethrowers, floodlights, a multicoloured drone show involving a three-storey, friday night at the Stade de France may just be the best show in sport. The pre-game was a full Cecil B DeMille production, with fireworks, flamethrowers, floodlights, a multicoloured drone show involving a three-storey cockerel that then reassembled itself into a beating red, blue and white heart before transforming into a vast tricolore along with a performance by 150 dancers carrying LEDs who performed to an, friday night at the Stade de France may just be the best show in sport. Too, erasmus had a trick up his sleeve.
The game turned early when Lood de Jager was sin-binned for a high tackle. France capitalised on the numerical advantage, with Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang diving over in the corner. Their second try was more fortuitous; after Dupont delivered a precise 50-22 kick, a pass from Yoram Moefana struck Kalvin Gourgues in the face, allowing Théo Attissogbe to pounce on the loose ball for a score. Erasmus later joked, “I’m not sure how you prepare a defence for a ball that bounces off a guy’s face.” Risen, fallen and risen again, in that time the team turned through successive generations and multiple iterations. Earsplitting choral rendition of Like A Prayer. The French took advantage of the precious extra inches of space in the Springbok defence. Dupont lashed a 50-22 right up to the South African try-line and as France tried to spread the ball Yoram Moefana’s pass hit his teammate Kalvin Gourgues flush in the face and ricocheted away over the try-line, where Thé.
South Africa’s “Bomb Squad”—Malcolm Marx, Ox Nché, and Wilco Louw—were introduced as early as the 35th minute in a tactical gamble by Erasmus. The visitors clawed back with a rolling maul try, but France responded immediately when Dupont set up Louis Bielle-Biarrey with a clever grubber kick to extend the lead to 14 points. However, the game grew chaotic as disciplinary issues mounted. Jasper Wiese received a red card for an illegal clearout, while Lucu and Grandidier-Nkanang were both shown yellow cards for the French side.
As the clock wound down, the South African pressure intensified. A try from Cobus Reinach and another from Malcolm Marx narrowed the gap to two points. The match hinged on a final conversion attempt by Manie Libbok with seven minutes remaining, but the fly-half missed the kick, leaving the score at 21-19. Régis Montagne also spent time in the sin-bin as the French pack struggled to hold off a relentless South African siege in the final minutes. Turns out this was just another bluff. This was just one of the twists in a match full of them. Some fantastic freewheeling tries, long stretches of intense scrummaging, a clutch of hugely controversial decisions by both coaches and the refereeing team and, at the very end of it all, one crucial missed kick, a conversion attempt by Manie Libbok that would have tied the scores with seven minutes left to play, there were a fistful of cards. All of a sudden a French bench featuring three front-row replacements with 25 international caps between them was facing up to the prospect of coming on to pack down against the gnarliest front row in international rugby. It was around now that everything started to unravel.
Reflecting on the loss, Erasmus offered a blunt assessment, admitting that his team were both outplayed and out-thought during the encounter. He stated, “I’m not going to sit here and say I am going to take the positives – it feels shit.” For France, the hard-fought result marks a significant turning point in their rivalry with the Springboks, achieved despite a depleted squad and immense pressure.
