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South Africa registered a comprehensive victory over USA in their final game of the round robin stage, winning 64-0 at the Olympic Stadium in London, to top Pool B and move on to the quarterfinals.
It was South Africa’s biggest win at the tournament so far.The night though belonged to Springboks wing Bryan Habana, who made history by scoring his 15th Rugby World Cup try overall and in the process tied New Zealand great Jonah Lomu as the all-time leading try scorer in the tournament’s history.
Habana netted a hat-trick, on a night when South Africa made light work of their opposition. And the third of those tries put him level with Lomu at the top of the pile. That wasn’t the lone accomplishment for the wing on the night; the treble also saw Habana equal Australian David Campese’s overall record of 64 tries, the highest by any player from a tier-one rugby nation, and second overall, behind only Japan’s Daisuke Ohata who scored 69 tries in his time.
In fact, Habana may well have broken both those records, had he just held on to the ball properly on 68 minutes as he dived across the line for a touchdown, thereby fluffing the try.
Just over two-and-a-half weeks ago, the world cup had begun on the most disastrous note for the rainbow nation when they were beaten by second-tier side Japan in their opening match. A pall of gloom descended upon the entire country post that result, but since then the Boks have made a stirring comeback to make the quarterfinals, finishing off with this huge win over the USA.
Despite not having much of the possession in the first quarter of the match, the Springboks made a \big impact with the very first chance they got as young centre Damian de Allende scored his first ever test try after picking up the ball from Schalk Burger. A penalty try awarded for three successive breakdowns at the scrum by the Americans made it 14-0 to South Africa going into halftime.
The Boks started the second half in much more impressive fashion as a superb grubber kick from captain Fourie du Preez sent Habana away in the right corner for his first try and Bismarck du Plessis soon scored his team’s third to put the result beyond question.
A driving maul soon saw Francois Louw score the next try for South Africa after which came the Habana show.
On 60 minutes Habana cut infield from his wide right position to score his second and then just two minutes later, he picked up on a loose ball on the right flank and sped away from the defence to complete his hat-trick.
By now the USA had been completely deflated and South Africa had free reign to run in more tries. Louw scored his second of the night before Jesse Kriel and Lwazi Mvovo added number nine and 10 in what was a comprehensive rout.
It was one of the most one-sided games in the tournament so far as the Springboks put out a powerful statement of intent with their performance which saw 10 tries being scored.
South Africa will either play Australia or Wales in the quarters depending on the result in the match between those two sides on Saturday. That game will happen at Twickenham on October 17.
