{"id":257953,"date":"2025-11-12T03:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257953\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T03:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:10:17","slug":"the-moment-the-boks-knew-the-french-cant-stand-up-physically-to-them-victor-matfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257953\/","title":{"rendered":"The moment the Boks knew ‘the French can’t stand up physically to them’: Victor Matfield"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former South Africa<\/a> captain Victor Matfield<\/a> believes the Springboks\u2019 recent 32-17 victory over France<\/a> surpassed their 43-10 win over the All Blacks<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Rassie Erasmus\u2019 produced the most emphatic performance of the Quilter Nations Series to date in Paris, made all the more impressive by the fact that they were reduced to 14 men for the second half following a red card to second-row Lood de Jager.<\/p>\n

Many would have thought that Les Bleus would pull away after the break with a man advantage following a confrontational first half, but it was the contrary, as Fabien Galthie\u2019s side dramatically wilted, allowing the Boks to score 19 unanswered points in the final 16 minutes.<\/p>\n

Though it wasn\u2019t until the 64th minute before the visitors first took the lead, 2007 World Cup winner Matfield actually believes the decisive moment in the match came in a scrum in the first half, when \u201cSouth Africa knew that the French can\u2019t stand up physically to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matfield pinpointed the scrum after 30 minutes, the fourth of the match, shortly after Gerhard Steenekamp<\/a> had come on, as the defining moment, which gave the Springboks the penalty advantage and the platform for Cobus Reinach<\/a> to score his solo try. This, however, had come 20 minutes after the Boks had already produced a penalty-winning scrum, which Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu<\/a> kicked three points from.<\/p>\n

\"Team Match Summary \"Team <\/p>\n

\u201cI look at this team and I think they can\u2019t surprise me more, they can\u2019t do better, and then they give a performance like this,\u201d Matfield said on the Rugby Rivals Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe this was a better performance than the one we saw in Wellington<\/a> against the All Blacks. How the guys came out in that second half, Malcolm Marx<\/a> did so unbelievably, Jasper Wiese<\/a> standing up, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu moving to No.15, Manie [Libbok] coming on. Yes, there were a few mistakes, probably not the best we\u2019ve seen from Sacha, but still, at the right time coming through and just dominating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that scrum, the scrum where we got that big scrum 30 minutes into the game, that just changed the game. All of a sudden South Africa knew that the French can\u2019t stand up physically to them. Then they started controlling the collisions as well, and game over. But what a game by South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former South Africa captain Victor Matfield believes the Springboks\u2019 recent 32-17 victory over France surpassed their 43-10 win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-257953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}