CHRIS HEWETT
THINKING ALLOWED

DID the spirit of rugby romance go to meet its maker in the immediate aftermath of the World Cup quarter-final weekend – perhaps the best 48 hours of union any of us ever saw, or could reasonably have expected to witness? At the very least, it left Stade de France on a hospital gurney en route to the nearest intensive care unit, and we must wait another four years to find out if it has survived.
It would be miserably mean-minded to cast these current Springboks as killjoys: the spectacle they serve up when Manie Libbok and Damian Willemse are finding fresh wa...