Good Day
For Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe as he basked in the admiration from a team-mate turned opponent which seemed to border upon a budding ‘bromance’.
Matt Giteau was a team-mate of the Argentina back-row man as Toulon became European champions when winning what was then the Heineken Cup last year and then again as the French club won the new version of the tournament this season.
They will both take the field in an even bigger match on Sunday with Giteau in fine form, albeit he is not alone in thinking his man-of-the-match award in last weekend’s quarter-final should have gone to one of his Wallaby team-mates.
While the Australians will once again go in as favourites doubts have been raised by their struggles against Wales, in their final pool match and Scotland in that quarter-final, whereas Argentina’s performances have attracted praise, not least their comprehensive destruction of European champions Ireland in their quarter-final.
Admiration and respect were certainly conveyed as Giteau was invited to pass comment on his Toulon team-mate then.
“He’s a beautiful man,” he said, with a chuckle
“I always told him that when he was at Toulon. He’s very skilful, he’s tough, defensively strong and adds a lot of stability to that team. I know what it’s like to play with him, especially in big games.
“He is a very, very good player, very confident in what he does and the things he can do a lot of other players can’t.”
Bad Day
For Pieter-Steph du Toit who was the only member of the World Cup quarter-final winning Springbok squad to be left out of their semi-finals after both Lood de Jager and Victor Matfield were declared fit to play.
Only 23, having made his solitary Test start against Japan in the pool stages, the lock must have felt he had more than done his job when he came off the bench last weekend to replace Eben Etzebeth with their side trailing Wales and only 12 minutes, before he played his part in the scrummage that set up the chance for Duane Vermuelen to break to the blindside and send Fourie du Preez in for the match-winning try.
However Matfield, their former captain and one of the greatest players in Springbok history who made the first of his 125 Test appearances when du Toit and de Jager were both only eight years old, was never likely to be left out of the squad once he recovered from the hamstring injury he suffered earlier in the tournament.
It is, however, a measure of how de Jager has performed in forming a new boiler-house partnership with Etzebeth, another 23-year-old, that even Matfield is having to settle for a place on the bench against New Zealand.
The over-riding impression is, meanwhile, that the Springboks are not going to be short of forward power in the foreseeable future.
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