It took a red card and a nine-point deficit for the All Blacks to throw caution to the wind and so nearly pull off the improbable
It was in the seconds after they had seemingly lost to South Africa that the All Blacks finally started to play like they really believed they could beat them. They had been mediocre for the first 30 minutes, as poor as they had been all tournament. All of a sudden they found themselves a man down and nine points behind after the referee Wayne Barnes confirmed that the yellow card shown to their captain, Sam Cane, had been upgraded to red, and, then in the very next second, Handré Pollard kicked his third penalty to put South Africa 12-3 up. Nobody has ever come from behind at half-time to win a World Cup final. And New Zealand weren’t going to do it playing this way.
They had already played 10 minutes with 14 men, after Shannon Frizell was sent to the sin-bin in the second minute. Worse, they had bungled two lineouts in South Africa’s 22, which was as many as they had lost on their own throw in the entire tournament before the final. They had been sucked into trying to beat up the Springboks. And it was costing them. Maybe it was the spectre of the seven South Africa forwards waiting on the bench, maybe it was the memory of that 35-7 beating they took at Twickenham before the tournament. Maybe it was both.
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