Partisanship and revenge: The Stade de France combination the Blitzboks need to overcome

Having scored the biggest upset at the Olympic Games, the Springbok Sevens side now faces their toughest task yet - a semifinal showdown with France that will be billed as revenge for last year’s Rugby World Cup.

The inclusion of French captain Antoine Dupont in the Sevens team is not by chance. After the Springboks’ narrow victory in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinal, there was always going to be some talk of revenge after their exit on rugby’s main stage.

After all, given that France’s underhanded tactics won them the right to host the 2023 World Cup, it was a sweet victory for the Springboks. But it also initiated protests, not the least from Dupont himself who had a full go at the referee after the game, and even inspired death threats to Springbok players such as Cobus Reinach.

Dupont’s comments post match will underline how personal this contest will be for him on Saturday, and for the French fans in general.

“I don’t want to be a bad loser and moan about the refereeing but I don’t think the refereeing was up to the level of what was at stake.

"It’s not just one person, there are TMOs, assistant referees, and they have time to review images as the game is going on.

“This doesn’t take anything away from South Africa’s performance, they played a great game."

Sevens is of course a very different game, and a very different approach. But the Stade de France crowd - the same stadium the Springboks achieved their historic quarterfinal win at - made their feelings clear when the Blitzboks shocked New Zealand on Thursday night.

The chorus of boos had been coming for a long time. Far from the Olympic spirit of brotherhood and Rugby’s core values, there was seething hatred in the boos that stemmed from last year’s World Cup loss.

It would be hard enough facing France in their national stadium in front of a cacophony of partisan rabid fans in any sport, but one that is hell bent on revenge will take that to a new level on Saturday afternoon as they look to give their side every advantage in the 14 minute contest.

And Dupont is a massive part of that. By far the biggest star at these Olympics, you would forgive him if revenge is in his heart. After the World Cup loss he announced he would turn to sevens to achieve an Olympic medal, and while he has won just about everything else, that night in Paris still hurts him - and his nation - more than we would know.

The addition of the lottery that is refereeing in the shortened game adds a lot of spice to the contest. In the pool rounds, Ryan Oosthuizen was yellow carded for a head clash that replays showed never saw him clash heads with his Irish opponent. On Thursday night the same Irish team went out to Fiji where the winning try looked to be a clear knock on that was ignored by the refereeing team.

The pace of the game makes referees and the TMOs make a split-second decision - far from the laborious process followed in fifteens. And while that might be praised for its brevity, it also tends to highlight the mistakes that could have been avoided with more circumspect analysis of an incident.

Either way, refereeing mistakes or not, Dupont will have one thing on his mind - winning - while the French fans will have revenge on theirs for the semifinal. France have done pretty well without him for most of their games thus far, but it is clear that come the semis, he is likely to take centre stage.

So where does that leave the Blitzboks, and their lazarus campaign that seemed dead and buried after day one. Sevens is a funny old game, one that sees two unbeaten sides on day one out and a side that lost two of their three games in the semifinal. Some may say they don’t deserve to be there, but the Blitzboks turned up when it mattered.

And given the history of big knockout games, they did what South African teams tend to do in these situations. They defended like demons, and considering the fatigue factor in sevens is far greater than fifteens, and the space even more, their defensive effort against New Zealand must rank among the best the team has ever produced on the international stage.

It had heart, belief and determination. It had passion and a never-say-die attitude. There was no way through and in the end they did what they had to do to get to the semis and keep their Olympic dream alive.

But they know Saturday’s challenge will be far greater, far tougher than what they have experienced thus far. And they know if they can keep their nerves and put the pressure on France, the fear of failure will be just as big a factor for the hosts as anything they can produce.

As coach Philip Snyman admitted after the quarterfinal win, belief was the key for this side, as it will be on Saturday in the semifinal.

“When the guys made it through to the quarterfinals, I said to them. ’gents, you must start believing’. Yesterday things didn’t go our way but you must truly believe.’ Our defence had been good but we couldn’t get the ball back.

“Tonight our defence system worked well and when we had the ball in hand we capitalised. We even left one or two tries out there. It was still not a perfect performance, but the guys fought for the system, they fought for the jersey and they fought for the country. I’m really proud of them and they deserve to be in the semifinals.”

Belief was what won the fifteens Boks the nerve to claim back-to-back World Cups and belief will be what fuels the Blitzboks on Saturday night.

And they know they will need all the belief they can get to overcome the French desire for revenge.

And Dupont’s thirst for the glory that has evaded him.