The Final
England vs South Africa in Yokohama
2nd November 2019
After a thrilling and victorious win overall the All Blacks in the Semi Final we were buzzing with excitement. We met up with Alex (Rob`s brother) who had come to the semi final with his friend Roy. We were high fiving and hugging, bouncing with what we had just seen, when Alex announced that Roy had spare tickets to the final and asked if we wanted them. We couldn`t believe it! We were going to see England complete the journey. We were going to the final!
We were committed to enjoying this last week of the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Firstly we needed to get festive, I spent some time trialling different face-paint and as we weren’t going to be sat with Mel, I planned a double sided fan design to cheer on our team. Eba used her extensive artistic skill to improve and make these come to life.
We then went to enjoy the bronze final in Roppongi. We located a large crowd of Rugby fans outside the Hobgoblin pub and joined them trying to view the match at funny angles through open doors and windows. The Crowds must have attracted British media who were trying to record some Vox pops for the build up of the next day’s event.
The next day felt like Christmas morning. We were excited for this spectacle and we had really learned that the build up and anticipation was as much fun as the match itself. We got dressed and painted and were ready for the day.
We headed for the Hub (a British theme pub), apparently everyone else had the same idea and the crowd outside it was rather large. We located our friends, Mel and Russ on arrival. Rob patted Mel’s superbly crafted, English Tea Set hat, to get her attention, and narrowly missed a slap in the face. Some of the rugby fans had already been interfering with the head piece and Mel was on the defensive. Don’t mess with a ladies Teapot! Luckily she just about recognised Rob, through his face-paint and didn’t end up laying him out on the concrete outside Lawson.
Mel’s amazing hat drew a lot of attention and she was asked to appear in pictures with others who had made the effort with their festive attire.
We thoroughly enjoyed the walk to the stadium and the excitement continued to build as our tickets were scanned and we finally entered the stadium area.
With Mel’s magnificent hat and flag, we caught the attention of British TV again, and were asked about our hopes for the match. Of course we were enthusiastically emphatic that England would win.
Once inside we were delighted to see how close we were to the action. We could see the UK punditry team of Brian O’Driscoll, Brian Habana and Sir Clive Woodard. Then we got a fantastic view of the England team warming up.
The warm ups ended and the teams were announced. The England team walked out proudly in their anthem jackets, the gold roses gleaming in the floodlights.
So, after much anticipation it began. England started nervously Laws giving away a penalty before 2 minutes had even passed, luckily Pollard missed the points. Barely a minute later and Kyle Sinckler collapsed to the floor knocked out by Maro Itoje’s elbow. The game stopped and everyone held their breath. It took some minutes for Sincks to come round and then longer for the medical staff to clear him to walk off the pitch under his own steam. This was not the start we had hoped for; South Africa’s scrum was going to be a tough enough prospect without England losing a key player. Dan Cole, an excellent scrummager and very experienced player came on to fill the tighthead role.
England gave penalties away particularly from the Scrum and Andre Pollard made them pay with his boot. By 30 minutes in England had thrown everything at the South African’s seemingly impenetrable defence and come away with nothing.
They left the pitch at half time after giving away another scrum penalty which provided yet another points opportunity for the Boks which was happily taken. The score was 12-6 to the Springboks.
The second half didn’t really improve for England. Dan Cole has since said that it wasn’t just the props that caused all the problems for the English scrum, the giant locks which South Africa seem to have in abundance, are quite something to have behind the already substantial props. This seemed to be one of the reasons for the hemorrhaging of penalties from the scrum. Replacing Mako Vunipola with the better scrummage of Joe Marler did seem to stem the flow for a period at least.
South Africa were also penalised for mistakes taking the scores to 15- 9. At around the 60 minute Mark Farrell bought the score closer, but the brutality of the game had taken its toll and when Mapimpi saw his opportunity and kicked the ball at a run, it was beautifully gathered by Am who flicked it back to the winger who dived over the line for the first try of the game. 25 points suddenly seemed like a large total to topple. Seven minutes later, the seemingly uncatchable Cheslin Colby sidestepped to produce the second try and sealed England’s fate.
It wasn’t the way we wanted it to end. The tournament had been a dream. But the win seemed to mean more to South Africa, it was symbolic for unifying the nation with its multiracial team. England had done us proud, we had seen them at their best and had had a wonderful time watching not just their journey but also Japan’s unfold in front of us. It was a magical 6 weeks that we will never forget.
