Greenwood lights up England on dark day for Springboks

England 53 South Africa 3

Three years ago, the Springboks brought the Boot of God, in the devout form of their drop-goaling outside-half Jannie de Beer, to bear on England and won themselves a place in the World Cup semi-finals. On Saturday, they opted for the Boot of Beelzebub instead – and a few other bits of the old devil, too, including his head, his elbow, his forearm, his fist and his knee – and lost pretty much everything, not least their dignity. Good conquers evil at Twickenham? It sounds a little over the top, but that is about the size of it.

There was quite a fuss afterwards, some of it fairly daft. Clive Woodward railed against the South African tactics while praising the England captain, Martin Johnson, for his leadership and discipline. Now, it is true to say that Johnson maintained his composure in the face of serious provocation; he also played a blinder, operating at a level above and beyond anything he had reached in the far narrower victories over New Zealand and Australia. But anyone catching Woodward midway through his eulogy might reasonably have imagined he was talking about Gandhi. The day Johnson embraces passive resistance, the entire world will spin off its axis.

Then came an audience with Rudolf Straeuli, the Springbok coach, who is constructed along the same lines as Table Mountain but says rather less. "One of our players [C J Van der Linde] has a dislocated shoulder and two [Bolla Conradie, Andre Pretorius] are concussed," he muttered, stony-faced. "They did not concuss themselves. It was a physical game: we came here as boys, we leave as men. And we will see England in Perth in the World Cup." Er, um, thanks for that, Rudi. You won't be forgiving and forgetting, then.

Next up was the South African captain, Corne Krige. Had there been a shift of power away from the southern hemisphere and towards Europe over these last three weeks? "You would like to think so, I'm sure," he replied. Ouch. Was the game as brutal as Woodward described? "Clive used the word 'brutal' the last time we were here." Okay, what did Krige say to his players when he called them into a huddle following England's seventh and final try? "I told them that this was not a great feeling, but that England had been there, too – in Australia, when they lost 76-0. I said I was proud of the heart they had showed and told them to remember how bad this feels. I also said that when we are standing in Perth, we won't be the ones in this position."

Perth will not happen for the best part of 11 months, but the smell of gunpowder is already overpowering. It cannot be healthy, even for those gnarled old rugger-buggers who insist that a match without a dust-up is no match at all. Straeuli is a decent sort, the product of a proud rugby family, a man raised to bow the head and bend the knee to the Springbok tradition. And on Saturday, he was hurting. A 50-point defeat, almost twice as heavy as any in 111 years of Bokke history, was a stain on his honour. But to raise the spectre of Perth in the way he did was dangerously irresponsible.

Thank heaven, then, for some honest-to-goodness West Country common sense from Phil Vickery, the officially designated man of the match. "We knew we were going to get it today, and we got it," the Gloucester prop said. "Where's the surprise?" England expected to get it because they knew exactly what their opponents knew: that the Boks, unusually weak up front in the absence of half a dozen front-line props, could not win the game unless the game became a war.

For the first 20 minutes, they charged into their hosts in battalion formation: they tackled, they scavenged, they smashed Jonny Wilkinson and Jason Robinson while the ball was in a neighbouring parish, they gave the wonderfully resilient Matthew Dawson all the grief he could handle. Butch James and Robbie Fleck, rugby's answer to the Kray twins, went head-hunting in midfield and left white-shirted heaps dotted around the park. Pretty, it was not.

And then it got genuinely ugly. The Boks, eight points adrift to a Wilkinson penalty and the now customary Ben Cohen try (wrong-footing scamper from Dawson, support from Lawrence Dallaglio and the hugely-committed Mike Tindall, quality finish as Fleck failed to nail his man in the cover tackle) were fully aware that Paddy O'Brien, the referee, was fast losing patience amid the cheap shots and dark-hued skullduggery. Eventually Jannes Labuschagne clattered Wilkinson with a late charge bordering on the posthumous and was packed off to sporting jail without passing "Go".

Game, set and match to England. Only twice had they visited the Springbok 22, yet they had scored on both occasions. They were in command of the scrummage – Wessel Roux and Deon Carstens may well be the least-proficient pair of props ever fielded by a Springbok nation that wrote the book on set-piece play – and were comfortably the more dangerous with ball in hand. That was also with 15 South Africans on the paddock. With 14, the tourists were dead and buried.

Not that they accepted the dying of the light with anything approaching equanimity. They continued to rage, and for all the barbarity of their play in the loose – "You have to be very sound mentally to stick absolutely to the plan when the late hits are flying around," pointed out Will Greenwood, the Harlequins centre – their passionate manning of the barricades demanded a modicum of respect. If he never takes the field again, Joe van Niekerk will be remembered for his extraordinary performance at No 8. We will see more of Pedrie Wannenburg, the 21-year-old rookie loose forward from Nelspruit. Werner Greeff, the full-back from Cape Town, looked dangerous – and not only when he hit Phil Christophers with a high tackle that earned England a fortuitous penalty try.

O'Brien's decision in that instance put England 32-3 ahead on the hour, and there would be three more scores: a maul-over job in the left corner for Neil Back, a Richard Hill catch and fall from Austin Healey's cross-kick and a pushover effort from Dallaglio, who was granted an early appearance when Lewis Moody retired with shoulder trouble midway through the opening quarter and treated the crowd to a very decent impersonation of Dallaglio at his best.

But it was Greenwood who gave a graceless occasion some semblance of lustre. For the first of his two tries, after half an hour, he backed his strength against that of Roux, spinning away from the front-rower's tackle at the posts and stretching an arm over the line. For the second, he transfixed both Pretorius and Breyton Paulse with a perfectly timed, beautifully balanced piece of running. He is, by some distance, the most sophisticated attacking weapon currently available to Woodward and his team. They should cherish him, and not even dream of moving him away from his optimum position of inside centre.

Greenwood has suffered his troubles, real troubles, over the last few weeks: the death of his first child, a few hours after birth, led him to re-assess his goals and values. "I certainly don't get stressed about a game of rugby," he said. "And when I play now, it will always be with a smile on my face."

If Greenwood's smile, which shone directly into a handily-placed camera lens as he scored that second try, turns out to be the enduring image of this game, international rugby will have reason to be grateful to him.

England 53
Tries: Cohen, Greenwood 2, penalty try, Back, Hill, Dallaglio
Cons: Wilkinson, Dawson, Gomarsall 2, Stimpson 2
Pens: Wilkinson 2

South Africa 3
Pen: Pretorius

Half-time: 18-3 Attendance: 76,000

ENGLAND: J Robinson (Sale); B Cohen (Northampton), M Tindall (England), W Greenwood (Harlequins), P Christophers (Bristol); J Wilkinson (Newcastle), M Dawson (Northampton); J Leonard (Harlequins), S Thompson (Northampton), P Vickery (Gloucester), M Johnson (Leicester, capt), B Kay (Leicester), L Moody (Leicester), N Back (Leicester), R Hill (Saracens). Replacements: L Dallaglio (Wasps) for Moody, 14; A Healey (Leicester) for Wilkinson, 43; A Gomarsall (Gloucester) for Dawson, 56; T Stimpson (Leicester) for Greenwood, 70; D Grewcock (Bath) for Kay, 70.

SOUTH AFRICA: W Greeff (Western Province); B Paulse (Western Province), R Fleck (Western Province), A James (Natal), F Lombard (Free State); A Pretorius (Lions), J Conradie (Western Province); W Roux (Blue Bulls), J Dalton (Falcons), D Carstens (Natal), J Labuschagne (Lions), A J Venter (Natal), C Krige (Western Province, capt), P Wannenburg (Blue Bulls), J Van Niekerk (Lions). Replacements: N Jordaan (Blue Bulls) for Conradie, 10; B Russell (Pumas) for Paulse, 48; L Van Biljon (Natal) for Dalton, 54; A Jacobs (Falcons) for Pretorius, 55; C J Van der Linde (Free State) for Carstens, 61.

Referee: P O'Brien (New Zealand).

* Disciplinary officials confirmed last night that Greeff had been cited by the independent match official, Paul Mauriac of France, for the high tackle on Christophers, and would answer to a tribunal tomorrow. Labuschagne's case will also be heard. As both players will be back in South Africa, the proceedings will be conducted by video link-up.

RECORD BREAKERS

* The 53-3 victory was England's biggest against Tri-Nations opposition, surpassing 29-9 (South Africa), 13-0 (New Zealand) and 20-3 (Australia).

* England set a world record of 18 successive Test wins at one venue, their Twickenham sequence overtaking France (17 at Parc des Princes) and Australia (17 at Ballymore in Brisbane).

* It was England's eighth successive victory against the Tri-Nations countries.

* Saturday's win was England's fourth in a row against South Africa, a first.

* It was South Africa's worst Test defeat, surpassing the 28-0 loss against New Zealand in 1999.

* England's seven tries is the most by one team in a Test between the countries.

* Will Greenwood became the first England player to score two tries in a Test against South Africa.

* Austin Healey became the 14th England player to win 50 caps when he came on for Jonny Wilkinson.

* Jannes Labuschagne was the first Springbok to be sent off in a Test at Twickenham, but the sixth South African dismissed in nine years after James Small (1993), James Dalton (1995), Andre Venter (1997), Brendan Venter (1999) and Marius Joubert (2002).