The Springboks will provide gruesome opposition,but the centre believes clarity of thought at key moments will send Wales into a Rugby World Cup semi-finalThis World Cup has produced some wonderfully vivid memories but Wales’s quarter-final against an uber-physical South Africa will not be for the fragile of heart. A mildly diverting game of rugby? More a supreme test of manhood masquerading as family entertainment. Jamie Roberts is a qualified doctor rather than a Shakespearean scholar but, on the eve of Twickenham battle, and there are distant Celtic-infused echoes of Henry V on the eve of Agincourt.
Listen,for example, to Roberts’ stark description of his most spectacular collision with the Springboks in Pretoria for the British and Irish Lions in 2009. “I’ll never forget the second Lions Test at Loftus Versfeld when there were five of us in the hospital afterwards, and ” he says,matter of factly. “Adam [Jones] came off with a shoulder which took two or three hours to score back in, Gethin smashed his face, and ODriscoll’s head was twice its normal size,I injured my wrist and ended up needing an operation, Tommy Bowe harm his elbow. There were five of us in an ambulance going to the hospital.
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Source: theguardian.com