RACING TIME ON PRINCE ALFRED’S PASS LEADS TO FAILURE
A few years back I stupidly entered a mountain bike race called Karoo to Coast, which took us from Uniondale in the Klein Karoo over the official longest mountain pass in South Africa to Knysna.
Well maybe it wasn’t stupid because it was a great weekend, and had it not been for my one cycling shoe splitting in two, leaving me barefoot for the last 40 or so of the 100 kilometres, I might not have come stone last. Dinkum, I was last! Or must have been because if there was anyone else left on the road by the time my bike crossed the line they would have been vulture food.
When I got to the finish in the gathering dusk I had been more than eight-and-a-half hours out there, or maybe it was nine and a half, and I thought I had done what I did in my first Comrades - as in missed a cut-off. But the K2C organisers are charitable folk so although they had already packed up, someone came running out of the twilight to present me with a medal. It was a nice touch.
This past Saturday there wasn’t a medal at stake as I travelled the Prince Alfred’s Pass in the opposite direction, but a rugby match. The British and Irish Lions were playing the Wallabies at the MCG and I wanted to see it even though I was booked into the De Rust Hotel for Saturday night and needed to get there from Plettenberg Bay.
It seemed just about possible to get there for the noon kick-off, but that wasn’t factoring a breakfast in Knysna that was too delicious to wolf down quickly. Also that a place out in the bundu called Angie’s G-Spot, a pub at the bottom of the pass that advertises, and I quote “Hot Beer, Lousy Food, Bad Service and Kak Accommodation” is too interesting to just drive past.
I didn’t feel like the “bad service” so I went next door to the farm-stall instead, but it slowed down the journey, as did a small miscalculation. De Rust and Uniondale, where the K2C starts, aren’t actually the same place. Which I know too well after being booked at De Rust for the 2018 K2C, which made the drive to the start and back for registration and then back to the start for the race itself more of an adventure than the ride itself. The towns are in fact about 80 kilometres apart.
DIDN'T WANT TO RISK MEETING THE GHOST
Anyway, the drive, even in my well suited for the course 4 x 4 Nissan Navara, turned out to be almost as long as some of my quicker mates took to cycle to the sea seven years earlier. In a nutshell, Uniondale was only reached halfway into the game, and looking for a television was clearly going to be fruitless as the town was deserted on a cold Saturday and I was nervous I might bump into the ghost the town is famous for.
I finally arrived in De Rust just after the thrilling finish. Well, thrilling finish for some. Boy can those Aussies whine and I completely agree with my colleague Brenden Nel that in attacking the decisions made by the match officials, the land that first coined the phrase “Whining Poms” could win a gold medal for hypocrisy.
ENOUGH OF THIS “BEST EVER” RUBBISH
Given the whining that came out of the Aussies it was perhaps apt that when I read about the game on my phone (you see I do have some modern traits), I was sitting in an establishment called The Grumpy Goat. The proprietor, who is a Glenwood old boy, in other words he was initially from good old KZN, agreed it wasn’t a game to miss, although I couldn’t quite make out whether that was because it was a good game or because he enjoys seeing Aussies losing.
Once I finally did get to watch it, I felt less sorry about missing it than some of the UK scribes covering the game made me feel about it. “One of the best tests ever” was the gist of some of the headlines and those who read a previous column where I decried the ease with which people throw that phrase “Best EVER” around, will know it made my skin scrawl.
If the “best ever” category encapsulated the 50 or 100 best test matches ever played, I would be inclined to agree that the MCG game belonged in that sub-set - in terms of the fightback, the dramatic end, and the controversy that added extra drama.
But did it come anywhere close to the second test between the Springboks and Lions in Pretoria in 2009? Although it is easy to understand why the UK rugby media preferred the most recent one - their team won in Melbourne, whereas Morne Steyn’s monster late kick sent them into fits of depression 16 years ago.
That 2009 game was both highly entertaining from an aesthetic viewpoint, meaning there were some spectacular tries scored, while also delivering high quality rugby in as physically brutal a game as I have ever watched.
There has to be some qualification around rating something as “the best EVER” for otherwise I could easily contend that the Carling Currie Cup game won eight minutes beyond the hooter by the Boland Kavaliers on the Sunday after the Melbourne game should be in the mix.
That was a game that had all the ingredients of the Wallaby/Lions game in terms of comebacks and late deciding tries, but was played at a different level. The 2009 Loftus game was a different level within games played in Lions series’ - in the sense that then they were playing the world champions, whereas this time they were playing a team that doesn’t rank in the top five.
THE OSCAR PERFORMANCE SHOULD BE THE TALKING POINT
It is easy to understand the frustration that Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt must have felt when his team were denied what would have been a famous win. On another day, that refereeing call could well have gone another way. Which is the problem with rugby - it’s way too complicated and for many laypeople some decisions must be as clear as mud.
What jarred in the Wallaby reaction to referee Andrea Piardi’s decision wasn’t so much what Schmidt said in the heat of the moment but that his CEO, Phil Waugh, also waded in by demanding that World Rugby clarify the decision.
Apart from the fact that Piardi did clarify why he was making the decision, Waugh was one of those ball scavenging openside flankers who will know full well about the fine margins when it comes to calls made at the rucks and collision points.
And as former Lions and Wales captain Sam Warburton, who played the same position, has pointed out, there were many instances in the same game where the referee could have made the call the Aussies were wanting, for and against both teams, but didn’t. To blow it differently just because the deciding try was scored then would have been patently wrong.
And given that there is so much grey area when it comes to officiating the contact points, shouldn’t the rage of the rugby media be directed at the Wallaby loose-forward Carlo Tizzano for effectively doing what in soccer has become common place and is known as “diving” or “taking a dive”.
Warburton referred to it as simulation, but whatever you call it, if that starts to become commonplace in rugby, in other words players produce an Oscar performance after every ruck or collision, rugby will become a mess.
Let’s not forget either that the Wallabies do have a track record for this sort of thing - reference Nick White on Faf de Klerk, that famous “slap” that led to the Wallaby scrumhalf falling over like he’d been on the receiving end of a left hook from the late Gerrie Coetzee, in Brisbane in 2022.
A MORNE QUOTE THAT MODERN COACHES SHOULD NOTE
So let’s not be holier than thou when it comes to complaining about the refereeing. Of course South Africans get aggrieved too when the calls don’t go their way and often wrongly so. One person in rugby who has always, somehow managed to keep a statesmanlike demeanour about him when making public utterances is the legendary former Springbok captain and team manager Morne du Plessis.
Morne was hugely respected as much by opponents by his own teammates, and I have a strong recollection of being introduced to the 1976 All Black captain Andy Leslie during the 1994 Bok tour of New Zealand and all Leslie wanted to talk about was what a great man Morne was.
That 1976 series was one where the All Blacks had more than enough to complain about, and let it be said, they might have been right about a lot of it, particularly in the fourth test where they were denied what should probably have been a penalty try that would have enabled them to square the series.
Instead they lost the series 3-1 and Morne was interviewed on the SABC television news about the New Zealand unhappiness with referee Gert Bezuidenhout, a Potchefstroom school master who had taken charge of three of the four matches.
“Yes,” said Morne in answer to the question, “the All Blacks may have reason to feel they were unlucky, but then I have played in a lot of games where I felt my team had been unlucky.”
I was 10 years old going on 11 at the time but that has always stuck with me. Had the Lions had the Hugo Keenan try chalked off by referee Piardi, it would be them and their media who’d be moaning like stuck pigs right now.
Let’s not forget that Rassie wasn’t the only coach to complain about refereeing in the 2021 series. Warren Gatland did start it after the South Africa A game that was played before the first test. As Morne intimated all those years ago, it is part of sport that people are lucky some of the time and also unlucky some of the time.
CURRIE CUP DIDN’T FEED THE GOAT
It was a weekend where last gasp tries effectively saved two different levels of competition. If the Cheetahs complained like the Aussies did about the late Boland try that decided the game in Wellington I haven’t been made aware of it, but the game itself at least provided a talking point after what had been a humdrum first weekend in the local domestic competition.
The focus on the finish in Melbourne and the refereeing decision also created a talking point around a Lions series that had been pretty disappointing up to that point.
I was gone from De Rust by the time the Boland game was played, but I did watch the Lions and Sharks play on the television in The Grumpy Goat before transferring to the bar at the De Rust Hotel for the game between WP and the Bulls.
Apparently both establishments are filled to the brim when the Boks play, and Werner at the hotel does have an impressive big screen, but not so for rugby matches not featuring the national team.
I asked if that reflected interest in the Currie Cup, for it is understandable that farmers wouldn’t trek into town to watch what has become a development competition, but was told it is the same when there are big URC games. The Boks are good for business, the Stormers and Sharks etc less so.
Which is a pity because the Boks only play between 12 and 14 games every year. The rugby business below international level in this country needs to thrive too - it’s not just in the interests of people who work in rugby to have a thriving interest in all levels of the game, but also the people who run establishments that would profit from more regular Saturday gatherings.
'ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK'
One of the coaches from a bygone era when the Currie Cup was the main event in South African rugby has just written a book and those who remember Alan Zondagh’s rugby philosophy when he was coach of first Eastern Province, then WP, London-Scottish, Saracens and then later director of rugby at the Bulls, won’t be surprised at the title - ‘Attack, Attack, Attack’.
Alan has written the book in tandem with his son AB, who is currently the attack coach at the French club Lyon, having previously served in that role at international level for Scotland. Before that he was an assistant coach at Toulouse after serving an apprenticeship at the Sharks as their skills coach.
Zondagh senior has such an extensive coaching CV that it would fill a book on its own, having started out as the Western Province Rugby Union’s director of coaching way back in 1980, when he was also the WP Under-20 coach. I first came across him when he was coaching Eastern Province between 1988 and 1991, a period when the Port Elizabeth based union had some relatively successful seasons playing rugby the Zondagh way.
I know how much hard work he put into the book as we live not far from one another and bump into each other regularly walking the Blouberg beachfront. It must be a good six or seven years since he first mentioned the idea behind the book.
There was a time when attack coaches either contributed little or were misunderstood in South African rugby, with defence coaches finding it easier to fill their sessions with substance, but that is changing and the book by the father and son team, as pointed out by Stormers coach John Dobson in his foreword, provides a great practical guide on coaching attack.
“Both father and son are superb and respected professional coaches, placing a high premium on skill,” wrote Dobson.
“‘Running the ball’ may seem like a simplistic notion from rugby’s romantic past, but the Zondaghs have managed to make it practical, modern and applicable to the professional sharp end of the game. This is not some nostalgic look at old fashioned systems; it is how to apply these attack principles today. On the field. Practically.”
As Dobson also pointed out, it is brave to write a book focusing just on attack, but the Zondaghs have done well. The book is very comprehensive and in a country where specialisation in attack coaching is a new concept, it should be a must read for not just those who are prospective attack or head coaches but anyone who has an interest in a constantly evolving sport.