WAYS IN WHICH New Zealand or South Africa can win the game and therefore the World Cup on Saturday inevitably came up for discussion on today’s Rugby Weekly Extra, the podcast for subscribers to The 42. 

Eoin Toolan, the former Ireland analyst, said that South Africa will look to assert their dominance at set piece and how referee Wayne Barnes interprets the scrum will be key. How and if the Springboks return to form following their underwhelming performance in the semi-final against will also be pivotal, Toolan said.   

“There’s going to be so much pressure on (Wayne) Barnes isn’t there from a scrum perspective? That’s really where the game is going to be won and lost probably in that last 25 minutes when the bomb squad come on particularly,” Toolan said. 

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“You can’t really get away from set piece, I think if South Africa start to assert dominance in scrum time, get their maul rolling forward … as I spoke to their mentality it’s so important for them to assert that dominance, they become quite difficult to contain. 

“So a huge job on New Zealand’s hand so, yeah, you would think there’s definitely vulnerabilities there so it’s just about if South Africa have the accuracy. 

“Because, let’s not forget, I don’t know if I remember a poorer performance from South Africa in  a big, big knockout game . . . Like, England were accurate and all of that but South Africa were highly inaccurate, so they’re going to need to recover from that. I think they’ll take confidence in the fact that they won ugly but they’re going to need to try and find their rhythm again come the final.”  

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