England vs South Africa: What happens if Rugby World Cup 2019 final ends in a draw?
The two nations go head to head in Yokohama
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Your support makes all the difference.England and South Africa have the chance to write themselves into the history books as they meet in the final of the Rugby World Cup today.
Whereas the Springboks are chasing a third world title, having previously won the tournament in 1995 and 2007, the English are looking to add to their 2003 success as the only northern hemisphere country to have ever lifted the Webb Ellis Cup.
Eddie Jones’ side head into the encounter as marginal favourites, having delivered what has been described as one of the all-time great World Cup performances to beat reigning champions New Zealand 19-7 in the semi-finals.
South Africa in contrast, came through a gritty arm wrestle with Wales, winning 19-16, to book their place in the last two.
But with so much at stake and a close contest expected from today’s clash, what if the Rugby World Cup final ends in a draw after 80 minutes? Here, we take a look at what would happen:
If the teams are level at full-time, they will initially play a 20-minute period of extra-time, split into two ten-minute halves with five minutes of interval between them.
If the scores still remain level, an extra ten-minute, sudden death period will follow, with the first team to score in this period the victors.
Should that ten minute period pass without points, the game will be decided by a kicking contest, which will work as follows:
“Each team nominates five kickers from the players still on the field and informs the referee of the order in which they will kick.
“These five players will then have one attempt each to kick a goal from one of three spots on the 22-metre line: directly in front of the posts (position one), on the 15-metre line to the left of the posts (position two) and the 15-metre line to the right of the posts (position three).
“The sequence is as follows for each team: kicker one from position one; kicker two from position two, kicker three from position three; kicker four from position one; kicker five from position two.
“The winning team is the one with the most successful kicks after five attempts, or earlier if one team is unable to equal the score of the other team with the number of kicks remaining. If there are an equal number of successful kicks, the competition moves to ‘sudden death’, following the same order of kickers used for the previous five kicks until one player succeeds with a kick and the other misses from the same position.”
Only three knockout games in tournament history have finished drawn after 80 minutes – including, peculiarly, two finals, in 1995 and 2003.
There has never been a kicking competition at the tournament, but a similar method was used to decide a Heineken Cup semi-final in 2008.
On that occasion, Leicester Tigers emerged victorious over the Cardiff Blues, with number eight Jordan Crane slotting the winning kick after Martyn Williams had missed for the Welsh side.
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