Coaching is easy when your players are as polished as these gems, says South Africa supremo after win that broke Welsh hearts

LONDON, 17 Oct - They sank to their knees and slumped onto their backs, exhausted and completely spent, their red-shirted bodies littering the Twickenham turf. Wales’s epic resistance, their amazing injury-strewn tale of derring-do and courage in the face of adversity, was over but it had taken a moment of wonderful inspiration to send them into despair.

Heyneke Meyer, South Africa’s coach, went further. It was, he said, a moment of genius devised by his genius and scored by his genius. Fourie du Preez, his quiet hero, just sat and listened to this description of himself and looked as embarrassed as sin.

“I would like to kiss Fourie,” exclaimed Meyer, who had looked like a man on the way to the gallows after the defeat by Japan but now seemed like a daft, giddy kid. Sitting next to him, poor old du Preez (above), a man of few words who reckons he hates all the media stuff, looked as if he wished he could go AWOL.

BRAVE BOKS: a last-minute try from Fourie du Preez steals the match & books #RSA’s place in the last four of #RWC2015 pic.twitter.com/rQoUn1RFp4 — Rugby World Cup (@rugbyworldcup) October 17, 2015

Yet out there, of course, he never went missing. He was a leader, as Meyer noted, who always delivered when he was needed most.

“I’ve always said coaching is overrated,” he gushed. “You have to be able to pick guys with character. Character is like charcoal; whenever you put pressure on you get diamonds.”

So it was that his little gem delivered that 75th-minute try that finally broke Welsh hearts and sealed the Springboks’ 23-19 victory, speeding like a bullet down the blindside alley to go over in the left hand corner to settle this wondrous, breathtaking epic of a test and pilot South Africa into the semi-final.

It looked as if it had come straight off the training park and it had. But, as Meyer admitted, it had nothing to do with him. It had been plotted all week between du Preez and Duane Vermeulen, even if it had not panned out quite the way the pair had envisaged.

As du Preez explained: “The plan was I was going to dummy to the right and Duane would go round the flank (to the left) into the winger. I just said to him in Afrikaans 'go left' but obviously I didn’t think he was going to give that flip pass and I was going to score. So credit to Duane, that was an unbelievable pass. And to give it at that moment showed what a big match player he was.”

Sleight of hand

Too true. The real “moment of genius”, as Meyer called it, had come from the big number eight’s extraordinary blind offload from behind his back straight into du Preez’s greedy clutches. It was sleight of hand that a back line wizard such as David Campese would have been proud of.

The Welsh defence, so sensationally stoic throughout the game, suddenly folded. “Maybe Lloyd Williams should have gone in hard on the ball, the scrum had screwed a little bit then potentially probably Alex (Cuthbert) should have stayed out, but it’s a great bit of skill, isn’t it?” shrugged Wales coach Warren Gatland.

No arguments. What is the point of the blame game when you should really be saluting this sort of skill? Through the second half, Wales were hanging on grimly as the South African pack began to take a stranglehold in classic Springbok tradition; wave after wave of direct attack, straight up and down, physical, making it a war of attrition. Yet, for all that huff and puff, it took a magical, dainty little bit of fantasy to finally breach the red wall.

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That Vermeulen should deliver it seemed fitting. Along with the ageless Schalk Burger, his thinning blond thatch crashing into one gainline break after another, the 29-year-old put in a stunning, tireless shift, making more metres than anyone else on the pitch.

Wales had nothing to reproach themselves for. Dan Biggar looked particularly irritated and crestfallen at the end after he had been forced to come off in the dying moments for a head injury assessment but Wales’s man of the tournament had been magnificent again.

Ultimately, the Welsh, in their third epic Twickenham encounter, were found wanting. “No-one could ask no more. They emptied the tank,” Gatland said, while Meyer accepted the game could have gone either way.

“I don’t think it was a game too far for us,” Sam Warburton, the Wales captain. “We just got caught out at the end. Sometimes, games are won by individual moments.”

Did he think they had done their country proud, he was asked. “I hope so,” Warburton shrugged. Welsh fans know so, yet it is the mighty Springboks, with Meyer’s “warrior and genius” du Preez at the helm, who deservedly march on.

RNS ic/ig