A HECK OF A DAY THAT BORDERED ON FREAK SHOW
It was always going to take a freaky occurrence for the Wallabies to end their long drought in Johannesburg, and last Saturday did rank as a freak show.
The doom merchants were out in force afterwards, but at halftime most of the media people, as they hungrily got stuck into the sumptuous fare laid on for them by the caterers hired by SA Rugby, were talking about how good the Springboks had been.
There was hardly a naysayer in evidence when it was suggested that this would be a day where the Boks would match what the team captained by Gary Teichmann did to the Wallabies in what became Carel du Plessis’s last game as coach.
The Boks won 61-22 on that August afternoon at Loftus in 1997, and as it was a day when some old timers who were writing rugby in that era had come out of the woodwork to reprise their old roles as rugby writers, there was some reminiscing between us hacks.
Mike Greenaway recalled the post-match press conference and the mood of the Australians in the room that day. The Australian coach Greg Smith, who a year later succumbed to a brain tumour, had taken a lot of flak from the media, but somehow always had an answer when pressed on why his team lost. He was known for being good with his excuses.
But when the late Greg Growden, writing then for the Sydney Morning Herald, led the questioning by asking in an abrupt way: “So what do you say now?”, Smith just slumped in his chair and said nothing.
That we were talking about it showed how convinced we were that the Boks were going to win by a similar score. It was like it wasn’t just halftime, but that the game had already been done and dusted. Maybe the Boks felt that way too, for they played like that in the second half.
THE LOADSHEDDING WHEN ESKOM WAS OFF SOUNDED A WARNING
In truth, what we were ignoring in the expectation of a big Bok win was a momentum shift that had happened already but was probably not considered relevant enough to remark on. When the Boks lost momentum in that first half, it was when Marco van Staden went off for his HIA assessment.
Van Staden had been a strong carrier for the Boks when he was on the field, but there was a brief period of loadshedding in the 15 minutes when ‘Eskom' was not there to provide the electricity. I remember expressing concern to colleague Brenden Nel, who was sitting next to me, about the number of penalties the Boks suddenly started to concede, and apart from the Boks being pinned into their own territory in that period, there was a fear that a yellow card might be imminent.
It also became progressively more evident that the Boks had been seduced by how easy it had been early on. They had become frenetic enough with their running and passing game in the second part of the first half for me to remark to Brenden that “They must be careful not to run themselves off their own feet”.
That’s a movie we’ve all seen before, though how much you remember it might depend on where you were in your life at the time. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the Hurricanes conspiring against themselves with their quick game against the Emirates Lions in a Johannesburg Super Rugby playoff game in 2016 as well as Ireland disappearing in the second half after enjoying a commanding lead against the Boks in Allister Coetzee’s second game as coach that same year.
There was also the 2013 Rugby Championship decider in Johannesburg. The Boks, captained by Jean de Villiers and coached by Heyneke Meyer, needed to win by a margin and also score four tries to clinch the Championship, and in the early stages they looked like they were going to run the All Blacks ragged.
But instead of running the Kiwis off their feet, they ran themselves off their feet, and the All Blacks put the game away in the last minutes, when it was as if the Boks were no longer on the field. Seeing we have the Wallabies in town, perhaps a more apt example of what happened last week might have been the previous time they won in this country at altitude - Bloemfontein in 2010.
That was a game where the Australians cooked at the off, like the Boks did last week. They raced into a 31-6 lead. The Boks were so outplayed in that period that the Bok coaching trio of Peter de Villiers, Gary Gold and Dick Muir were the targets of some vicious verbal abuse from Bok fans sitting around the coaching box.
The story was related to me about how every time the Wallabies scored en route to a 31-6 lead, the surrounding throng would bang on the glass of the box and make threatening gestures. But then the game changed, and the Boks did what the Wallabies did last week by scoring enough unanswered points to take the lead.
Unfortunately for them, the effort of playing catch-up caught up with them, and Kurtley Beale sunk them with a penalty from his own half at the death.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR OVERSEAS CRITICS TO VENT THEIR SPLEEN
It had to happen, and it was always going to happen if you are a regular reader of some overseas, and in particular UK, newspapers. A Bok defeat has become a rare thing, so it has meant that there have been rare opportunities for people who, in some cases, appear to have an agenda, to have a proper go at Rassie, first and foremost, and the Boks and their fans second.
I don’t like having a go at fellow rugby writers, in fact it should never be done, but I am finding it difficult to help myself here, so I will do it without mentioning a name. Let’s just say that there are people in the industry who I have had massive respect for who have, as they’ve got older, provided me with a salient warning that maybe there is a sell-by date for people in this job as much as there is for players and coaches and that maybe I should heed that when I get to that age.
Referring to Bok supporters as arrogant and ungracious, and levelling the same accusation at Rassie, was last week an indication that emotion and hatred can sometimes blind you. Firstly, a significant number of fans at Ellis Park last week clapped the Aussies off the field after their win. Maybe you had to be there to know, but while people were stunned, they were not ungracious.
And when Rassie praised the Aussies at the post-match press conference, there was nothing ungracious about him, and definitely nothing arrogant. He referred to his team’s second-half performance as dogsh*t, which it was. So he was honest too. The Bok player interviewed, Jesse Kriel, was gracious and honest in equal measure too.
If there are questions about Rassie as a loser, and how he behaves as a loser, they were answered last week. As indeed they were in the press conference in Durban last year when the Boks lost out to a last-gasp Ireland drop-goal. He spent all his time praising Ireland and giving them credit, although those who know him would have been certain he wasn’t happy and could easily have blamed the whole defeat on the poor game management of some of his players towards the end or some refereeing decisions.
Another headline asked the question “Is the Bok reign over?” Really? After one game? The Bok reign as world champions will only end, if indeed it does, on the day another team lifts the Webb Ellis Cup in Sydney in November 2027. Not a second before then, if that does happen. I won’t be betting on it happening, for wakeup calls halfway through a World Cup cycle, which was when last week’s happened, might well prove to be a good thing in the long run.
DON’T FORGET THOSE FIRST 20 MINUTES
I have already made my view known in my Talking Point column on Tuesday - “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Meaning that last week’s shock defeat shouldn’t be reason for the Boks to undertake such a profound reset that they reinvent the wheel, or worse still, tread back into the more conservative playing style of the past. The one we used to refer to as “South Africa’s traditional game”.
Fortunately, judging from the way Rassie answered my question at the team announcement press conference, there is no chance of that. The Boks will continue to evolve their game as they have been doing since Tony Brown became involved as the attack coach.
But it could be instructive to the Bok critics, those who might buy into the theory that last week was the beginning of the end, to keep that opening 20 minutes in mind. Damian de Allende said during the week that it was possibly the best 20 minutes he has seen from a Bok team, and I would find it hard to disagree.
When a team loses, for both supporters and those who want them to lose, the emotion of the defeat often overtakes common sense. Instead of letting either disappointment or hatred override all else when analysing last week’s game, a more sober dissection should surely have focused more on the fact that the Boks only made 18 kicks in the game - some say 19 but it is still low - which is so far away from the usual, and the fact that there was a clear deviation after the 20th minute from what happened before.
Those first 20 minutes provided the perfect balance. I am not sure the weather conditions predicted for Cape Town on Saturday will provide an opportunity for a replication of that, but when the Boks can stretch that 20 minutes into 80 minutes, I don’t think there will be a team in the world that will be able to live with them. I have a funny feeling the Australians know that. They weren’t nearly as braggy as they could have been after last week’s win. They remembered how under the kosh they were in that first quarter and will know the Bok potential to do it again.
WALLABY COACH WAS SPOT ON - AND NOT JUST WITH HIS GAME
Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt got most things he did right last week, and he deserved all the credit that came his way afterwards. Rassie was the first to admit he was out-thought on the day.
What he also got right was what he said at the press conference afterwards. Both in terms of why the Boks lost, meaning they were seduced into thinking it was going to be easy, and also that his team was a bit lucky.
I hate focusing on refereeing decisions, but Ben O’Keefe did give the impression last week that he might be trying hard to get a monkey off his back. That being the perception that he helped the Boks win the last World Cup. There were some odd calls.
And there was one in particular from the refereeing team as a whole. Many of my colleagues were still scoffing the food when Wallaby captain Harry Wilson scored the Wallaby break-back try straight after halftime. It was a poor defensive mistake from the Boks, but at the time, I thought the final pass was clearly forward. And when watching the game on replay later in the week, it still looked forward.
The SuperSport commentators politely referred to it as “flat”. Not for me. And if the long pass that found Max Jorgenson for his try had not been caught by the wing, the ball might have ended up in Kempton Park. Whether or not Schmidt was referring to his team getting the rub of the green or not will only be known by himself, but if he was saying that, he may have been right.
WORLD RANKINGS ARE CONFUSING
It does appear that some take the World Rugby rankings more seriously than others. For instance, in sending an under-strength squad to New Zealand earlier in this international season, the French showed exactly what they thought of it. As did Argentina when they went under-strength against England.
I find the Bok fall from No. 1 a bit confounding, considering that the team that replaces them, the All Blacks, have lost four games since the Boks beat them to become No. 1 in the last Rugby World Cup final - Argentina once, the Boks twice, and France once last November. The Boks have only lost three games in that period - Ireland last July, Argentina in Argentina and now Australia.
Presumably, the New Zealand ranking was bolstered by their 3-0 series win over France, and as Jeff Wilson said on The Breakdown this week, that is hardly the Kiwis’ fault. Or the southern hemisphere’s fault that suddenly it is looking like the Rugby Championship is becoming the World Championship, with the prospect of the Wallabies joining the Boks and All Blacks in the top four if they continue their current improvement.
AVOIDED THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATERS
Just in case anyone is interested, I avoided the Purple People Eaters on the return to Cape Town from Johannesburg last week. Well, we might have flown over Welkom in the A320 I used as an alternative to the Greyhound Dreamliner I travelled up in, but the People Eaters would have been at least 33 000 feet below me by then. Flying is less eventful than travelling by bus, so I have zero to report.
Which reminds me of former Sharks CEO Brian van Zyl’s response to a question put to him by a Durban colleague, Mike McGrath, when he arrived in Joburg for a Currie Cup final back in the day.
“Brian, how was your flight?”
“It was uneventful.”
All flights must be like that.
A DAY WHERE ‘GEES’ WILL DRIVE A RESPONSE
Mention of Brian van Zyl reminds me of a similar situation the Boks are in now. It was when the Boks were being coached by Ian McIntosh. It was Mac’s second year in charge, 1994, and an underprepared Bok team were thrashed by England in Pretoria before travelling to Cape Town a week later for the second test..
I had breakfast with Brian at the old Woodstock Holiday Inn (I was still living in Durban, and like Brian, had flown down for the game). When we had the inevitable conversation about who would win the game later that day, Brian was emphatic that the Boks would, even though they had been such a poor second seven days earlier.
When I asked him why he thought they’d win, he said just one word: “Gees”.
The translation from Afrikaans to give you ‘spirit’ doesn’t really do justice to what that word means. But it does play a role in my own conviction that the Boks will win comfortably in this Cape Town game.
For the record, that 1994 team completely reversed the result, winning the game 27-9 following a week where Mac had pinned newspaper articles slamming the Boks in every player’s hotel room. That is hopefully a bit old school for Rassie now, but I have a hunch we might see a similar response from the Boks. And a similar score.