Friday night at the Stade de France may just be the best show in sport. The French had laid on a full Cecil B DeMille production: fireworks, flamethrowers, floodlights, a multicoloured drone show involving a three-storey-tall cockerel that then reassembled itself into a beating red, blue and white heart before transforming into a vast tricolore along with 150 dancers carrying LEDs who performed to an ear-splitting choral rendition of Madonna's Like a Prayer. Astonishingly enough, what came after actually lived up to it.
It had twists and turns, a scattering of superb performances from some of the finest players in the game, a fistful of red and yellow cards, fantastic free-wheeling tries and several agonisingly intense stretches of scrummaging and defence, a clutch of hugely controversial decisions by both coaches and the referee, and one crucial missed conversion. At the end of it all, somehow, France had won by two points, 21-19, in their first victory against the Springboks at their national stadium in 21 years.
After 10 minutes of frantic tussle, the half turned when Lood de Jager was sent to the sin-bin for a high tackle on Maxime Lucu. France took advantage of the precious extra inches of space his absence left in the Springbok defence. Their wing Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang, born in Bromley but irresistibly French in the way he plays, came down the left to take a crossfield kick from Antoine Dupont in the South African 22 and was checked at the last second by Ethan Hooker. Play drifted away but moments later the ball was back with Grandidier-Nkanang again and this time he dived through to score in the corner.
Their next was a little less slick. Dupont lashed a 50-22 and France tried to spray the ball wide when South Africa checked their maul. Yoram Moefana's pass hit his teammate Kalvin Gourgues flush in the face and ricocheted away over the try line, where Théo Attissogbe pounced to touch it down. South Africa pulled a try back with their own rolling maul, but before anyone could catch their breath after the restart Dupont had put Louis Bielle-Biarrey through with a tumbling grubber and France were 14 points up again.
Earlier in the week Galthié had dismissed the idea that he and Erasmus might be playing mind games with each other as "comic-book stuff". Turns out this was just another bluff. The French had said Dupont was going to start at fly-half, and he sure wore No 10 on his back, but he played the game in his usual position while Lucu played outside him.
Erasmus had his own sleight of hand. An hour before kick-off, he shuffled his lineup. Erasmus dropped Ox Nché, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw back into the replacements so that all of a sudden a French bench featuring three men – Rodrigue Neti, Régis Montagne and Maxime Lamothe – who had just 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. Erasmus actually pressed the detonator early. He sent on his bomb squad in the 35th minute.
It was an odd decision; South Africa had been dominant in the scrum and the impact of it was lost in the action that followed. Lucu was shown a yellow card for a high tackle of his own right before the interval, but the loss hardly seemed to stem the French. Lucu was only just back on the field when Grandidier-Nkanang was off too, for slapping down a pass in the French 22. Jasper Wiese was shown a red for an illegal clearout on Gourgues.
Somewhere among all the fun, South Africa had one try struck off when Kurt-Lee Arendse was ruled offside after he sliced through the French defence at the back of a long lineout, and scored another when Cobus Reinach bundled his way after a rolling maul. The French were clinging on now, the crowd crossed fingers and clasped hands, while their team fought to defend their seven-point lead. They endured an agonising series of scrums on their own try-line, in which their replacement pack creaked and buckled till Montagne was shown yet another yellow card.
South Africa finally burst through but the ball was held up. Lucu missed a penalty kick at goal during a rare French foray into South African territory. And soon enough the Springboks came back at them again and this time Marx finished off a rolling maul. That ought to have levelled the scores, only Manie Libbok missed the crucial conversion.