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Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers predict all southern hemisphere semifinals at RWC
By Ned Lester
Whether it's through the RugbyPass road to the final predictor or a debate over dinner, everyone is selecting their World Cup favourites with the tournament kicking off in just one week's time.
Springbok legends Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers have voiced their predictions, with an unsurprising conclusion but some huge calls through the knockout stages.
The pair, speaking on Betway South Africa's Youtube, offered some blunt punditry when assessing the pools, with de Villiers claiming "all the teams that could actually win the World Cup" were in Pools A and B.
All of the top five teams in World Rugby's rankings sit in those two pools, with France and New Zealand in Pool A and Ireland, South Africa and Scotland in Pool B.
Matfield selected Australia as the winner of Pool C with Wales finishing as runner-up. It was an admittedly "conservative" selection given Fiji's recent form and Georgia's potential.
Argentina and England were picked from the field of Pool D, with Los Pumas claiming the top spot. Samoa, Japan and Chile would be eliminated.
The selections mean England would play Australia and Wales would play Argentina in the first round of the knockout stages.
Of course, the pair picked South Africa to progress undefeated from Pool B, while they also hesitated to name Ireland as the runner-up given Scotland's recent form: "I think that's where the upset is going to come, (but) let's go safe."
New Zealand was given the nod ahead of France for Pool A, meaning the Kiwis would topple the hosts in the Rugby World Cup opening match.
Those predictions set up Ireland vs New Zealand and South Africa vs France in the quarter-finals. Both Matfield and de Villiers were happy with the outcome, stating they "prefer France" to New Zealand as a quarter-final opponent.
Both southern hemisphere sides were tipped to emerge victorious.
Similarly, in the Australia vs England and Argentina vs Wales quarter-finals, it was the southern hemisphere sides who were picked as winners.
Of the four Rugby Championship nations, New Zealand and South Africa were decided to be the finalists with the Springboks taking home the Webb Ellis Cup for the second consecutive tournament.
Commenting on their prediction of all northern hemisphere teams being eliminated prior to the semi-finals, de Villers said there is a lot of focus on the European teams winning the tournament, but "I don't think that's going to happen."
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Latest Comments
Think we have to accept we have been on the slide for a while now.Still interesting to see the repeated media pieces about the myth of the ABs slipping-I would say slipped past tense.In part don’t we have to give credit for the improvement of other nations particularly Ireland?Isnt that good for the game?Are we beginning to feel the impact of losing the Boks from Super rugby and maybe soon TRC?I would agree we are also ran right now so will be interesting to see how we progress-assuming we do!Isnt that part of sport though to be in improvement mode?Back to the stats though I think the Boks were under 60% leading into 2019?Now with the focus on the RWC does it matter so much what you are doing between tournaments?You just get through your group(remembering the ABs qualified 2nd in 2023)and then you have 3 matches to win the thing.
Go to commentsThe ABs have more than enough back line guys so don’t see issue there. Just the balance at center and feel time for Rieko to sit out.Forwards- balance still not right. Front row ok but miss Codie. But still ok. Locks- you now need to start s a tall timber at middle of lineout- Darry is the right guy. Then move Sititi to 8, move Ardie to 7 and then move Vaai to blindside. He can become the closest to PSdT . Then have proper bench as this is not a demotion but key to dominating last 30 minutes- Patrick, Ofa etc are golden here. Get the balance right between starters and finishers
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