France enjoyed a one-sided 57-10 victory over South Africa at Franklin's Gardens to take top spot in Women's Rugby World Cup Pool D, scoring nine tries with two each for Emilie Boulard and Joanna Grisez. They will take on Ireland at Sandy Park in Exeter next Sunday in the last eight. The scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus earned a second straight player of the match award for orchestrating France's highest score over the Springbok Women in front of a sellout crowd of 15,000.
It has been a South African summer at Lord's. After the World Test Championship triumph in June came a second to savour at the home of cricket: a tight five-run win under lights that sealed their first one-day international series victory on English soil for 27 years. For England it was another reminder of how far they have fallen since lifting the World Cup on this ground six years ago, this their fifth ODI series defeat from their last six.
The 1980 tour of South Africa by the British Lions was not solely a rugby tour. It was a 70-day, all expenses, paid anthropological study of one of the world's most troubling, most diverse and most interesting countries. The 30 players from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland who left London would not have missed it for the world.