Rugby is played on grass, though, not on paper. And after a quartet of titanic games with razor-thin margins, it's the southern hemisphere which emerged — again — as the likelier to win the Webb Ellis Trophy.
The semifinals are set: Argentina vs. New Zealand on Friday and England vs. South Africa on Saturday, both at the Stade de France outside Paris.
Indeed, the France-South Africa and Ireland-New Zealand matches were instant classics, the highlights of one of rugby's great weekends. England wants payback against the Springboks from not just the final four years ago in Japan but also the one 16 years ago in France. That 2007 World Cup had three of the same semifinalists — England, South Africa, Argentina — from this year.France's slogan for the Rugby World Cup has been ‘United for a Dream’ and it has been clear over the past month that the connection between Les Tricolores and the French public was as strong as ever.
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