Lund offers hope but glory is with Springboks as Habana runs riot

South Africa 55

England 22

Half-time: 17-19

Att: 47,659

It took some believing at the time - England's third-string side, seasoned with a sprinkling of fourth-teamers, in a half-decent position to win a Test match in one of the more forbidding Springbok fortresses - and in the end it was nothing more than a mirage. The South Africans, befuddled and bemused for much of an opening half in which the tourists fought tooth and nail for every last scrap of possession, finally found sufficient momentum to pass the 50-point mark for the second consecutive week. It was rough on Brian Ashton's men, but if an international outfit visits these parts with a mix of new caps and honest-to-goodness club professionals, they are unlikely to make it home in one piece.

A grey afternoon on the high veldt produced a grey Test, illuminated only by the contributions of two special players. Bryan Habana and Pierre Spies, a back and a forward performing in front of their home crowd in Pretoria, claimed two tries apiece, and while England presented each man with five of his points, there was something jaw-dropping about their other scores. Spies, the quickest No 8 in world rugby by such a distance he could lap his peers without breaking into a sweat, beat four defenders - Andy Gomarsall, Jonny Wilkinson, Jamie Noon and Magnus Lund - in giving his countrymen a lead they would not lose midway through the third quarter. Habana, meanwhile, made fools of Toby Flood and Nick Abendanon in registering a try remarkable as much for the audacity of its vision as the pace of its execution.

Had these brilliant Blue Bulls not been on the field, England would have been spared the worst ravages of another heavy beating. As it was, they spent the final half-hour praying for deliverance. As in Bloemfontein seven days previously, the Boks made them suffer in the last 10 minutes or so, accumulating 19 points with disconcerting ease. However, this was no Bloem-bashing. The England pack, bolstered by the presence of Matt Stevens at tight-head prop and the indefatigable Lund at open-side flanker, competed so aggressively in the loose that the vaunted Springbok flankers, Juan Smith and Schalk Burger, spent half their time on the back foot and the other half on their backsides.

It came to such a pretty pass for the Boks that they were trailing at the interval, albeit by two miserable points. They had put themselves on the board with an early penalty from Percy Montgomery, a distinctly fortunate try of the evil-bounce variety from Ricky Januarie and a close-range wrestling effort from Burger, who took advantage of a rare loss of concentration by England at the scrummage. Yet the visiting forwards applied pressure in every area bar the line-out, which was shambolic in the extreme. Wilkinson chipped over a series of three-pointers to keep his side in the hunt, and then converted an interception try from Dan Scarbrough to open up a 19-17 advantage at the turnaround.

There was much to admire from the unranked, unrated tourists in that opening 40 minutes. Stevens, born and raised in South Africa, revelled in the challenge of staring down the Afrikaaners and putting his imprint on a game the Boks assumed they would dominate, while Lund turned in one of the outstanding defensive performances in recent memory, playing himself back into World Cup contention after a recent slide into anonymity. It was cruel indeed that he should have been implicated in the first of Spies' tries. Only a granite-hearted taskmaster of the Dickensian variety would not excuse one missed tackle in heaven knows how many.

Unfortunately for England, there was always a likelihood that Jake White, the Springbok coach, would use the interval to summon something far more ruthless from his charges. Three minutes after the resumption, Wynand Olivier and the ubiquitous Spies stampeded into dangerous territory down the left to create an overlap of alarming proportions going right. John Smit, the Bokke captain, found Victor Matfield with a long pass in midfield and the lock possessed enough footballing know-how to float the ball over the head of Jean de Villiers and send his second-row partner, Bakkies Botha, over in the corner.

Wilkinson levelled it at 22-apiece with a fifth penalty, but when Spies made mincemeat of the England defence with his long-legged glory gallop on 53 minutes, there was precious little doubt as to the outcome. Less than four minutes later Ben Skirving, a whole- hearted debu-tant at No 8, flicked an interception pass to Habana - just about the last person on earth likely to make a nonsense of an 80-metre run-in - and when Montgomery found himself up against England's substitute prop, Stuart Turner, with the line beckoning, another seven points materialised. Montgomery is getting on a bit, but the full-back will run round the likes of Turner for a while yet.

Habana, dummying and ducking his way past the otherwise excellent Flood and skinning Abendanon on the outside, took the Boks further into clear green-and-gold water, while Spies had the honour of moving them past the half-century after some high-class approach work from Bob Skinstad, back between the shafts at international level for the first time since 2003. These were tortuous moments for the visitors, not least Lund, who had given everything of himself before digging deep into his competitive soul and offering some more.