DAAN HAS TURNED IT INTO MORE THAN JUST A TOLL PLAZA
If you’ve got to know South Africa through road travel, you should know the Verkeerdevlei Toll Plaza. It is on the N1, about 40 minutes out of Bloemfontein, and you will pass through it if you are travelling between Johannesburg and Cape Town or between Durban and Cape Town using the N5 and N1 routing as an alternative to the more scenic yet time consuming coastal route.
Until Sunday it was just another toll plaza. But thanks to the Daan Human press conference last Tuesday, it has now become more than that. It was hard to keep the Springbok scrum coach out of mind as I passed through it as I exited the live part of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour via the long road home.
I had flown the rest of the tour, but there was always a plan to move my old X-trail, which my daughter who lives in Joburg no longer uses because she’s upgraded, back to Cape Town at the end of it. Touch wood, but so far so good. An accumulated mileage of 375 000 kilometres sounds like a heck of a lot, but car people tell me my many long trips have helped the vehicle’s longevity. It’s the motor industry’s version of Deon Fourie.
But let’s not digress away from South Africa’s new cult hero, Daan. When he spoke about the South African love for scrumming last week, he mentioned Verkeerdevlei as one of the places people adore the scrum.
Which, because there are no pills to prevent stupidity, I didn’t realise at the time was because that’s where he lives. Well, not in the toll plaza obviously, but his farm is somewhere nearby. And Verkeerdeveli, as Google has just informed me, is also a town. I thought it was just a toll plaza.
And ‘Daan’s farm’. Yep, it’s becoming part of rugby folklore. And Daan is becoming a Rassie level cult hero given the way the 87 000 supporters - well, apart from the Kiwi contingent obviously - started to chant ‘scrum, scrum, scrum’ during the FNB Stadium test.
Which was just what he’d asked them to do in his press conference. Much like Rassie asked for respect for the Haka, and got his wish at Ellis Park in the first test, to the chagrin of some but not me.
‘Scrum, scrum, scrum’ certainly makes more sense to me than ‘Ole, ole, ole’, although the DJ at soccer city did produce a bit of a mixed bag. Initially there was friendly music when the Boks were scrumming down, it was only later in the piece, perhaps at the suggestion of my good mate Dr Alan Inglewood, otherwise known as AI, that the stadium announcer cottoned on.
Anyway, that odd habit I have of attaching places to rugby people, or cricket people for that matter, such as the hard hitting former Eastern Province middle order batsman Vlam Michau coming to mind every time I go through Cradock (Ncuba), means Verkeerdevlei is now Daan’s Vlei. Which it damn well should be for every South African, not just me.
AH BUT YOUR MAUL IS BEAUTIFUL
I think it was Alan Paton who wrote a book called “Ah, but your land is beautiful”. This Monday morning someone should pen something titled “Ah, but your maul is beautiful”. For that maul, as Nick Mallett pointed out to my colleague Brenden Nel and I on our Talking Boks podcast, was indeed beautiful.
And if you have to ask which maul then you weren’t on this planet over the past weekend. There was a statement maul in the early part of the Cape Town test, but the one that took up 25 metres if you measured a straight line from genesis point to tryline or, as former All Black fullback Mils Muliaina pointed out on The Breakdown, 35 if you measured distance covered, pretty much took the cake.
There were many game changing moments you could point to in the 80 minutes at the FNB Stadium, and that destructive scrum that brought the crucial late first half penalty try was one of those, but the maul that led to Malcolm Marx dotting down was the game killer. There was no ways the embarrassed All Blacks were ever going to come back from that.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but judging from WhatsApp messages received since ‘The Maul’, many South Africans seem to share the same appreciation of beauty. Actually, make that rugby union lovers.
It is the scrum and the maul that differentiates the most popular rugby code (globaly) from the one that causes such a fuss in the Antipodes, and has driven much of this series’ narrative, but gets such little traction elsewhere with the exception of small tracts of northern England.
RENNIE MADE A MISTAKE BY SPEAKING ABOUT THE SCRUMS
Former Sharks coach and All Black assistant John Plumtree is a born and bred New Zealander but knows something about the South African rugby psyche. So it was interesting to hear the now presenter of the entertaining and informative TMO rugby show on the PlayZN radio station broadcasting from Umhlanga suggest that Dave Rennie may have made a grave mistake by making a fuss about the scrums.
Well, let’s interrogate that for a second - Rennie will claim he was only answering questions when the issue of the scrum, and his stated view (I say stated because I am not entirely convinced he believed it) that the Boks scrummed illegally at Ellis Park, came up. And that is true.
But it was quite a thing to say he’d flagged the alleged indiscretions to World Rugby, and it is also disingenuous for him to suggest it wasn’t a theme. He started it after the Stormers scrum ate his men for breakfast for the first hour of the opening tour game.
Anyway, when Brenden and I interviewed Plumtree, we were surprised how readily he admitted that Rennie had made a mistake, in the sense that “you don’t need to give those boys any extra motivation”. Meaning the boys involved in the Bok scrum, both players and Coach Daan.
And that seismic scrum that destroyed the All Blacks and earned the Boks the game changing penalty try shortly before halftime was probably written in the stars once Rennie had again hinted at Bok scrumming illegalities after the Cape Town test. Little surprise Rennie made a point of keeping away from scrums in his most recent press conference.
AUSSIE CRICKETERS KNOW YOU SHOULDN’T NEEDLE SOUTH AFRICANS
You don’t poke the bear, particularly not if the bear is South African. I always reference the events that conspired together for the Proteas in the infamous 2018 Sandpapergate series when making this point.
It will be recalled that the South African cricketers were being well beaten in the first test of that series at Kingsmead - until there was a flare up involving the Australian batsman David Warner and Quinton de Kock that led to a dust up on the stairs leading into a tea interval.
That, and the sledging that led to it, appeared to change the Proteas, who effectively never took a backward step after that in the series.
That this would be the case was telegraphed by a tweet from AB de Villiers. I can’t remember exactly what it was he said, but it was an indicator that his focus was going to become extra intense after that. And sure enough, AB battled the rest of the series like he was BA (Barry Anderson Richards) when he was motivated and not bored and the rest, as they say is history. SA won the series 3-1. Which I think the Boks will do now.
A LITTLE RAIN DOESN’T MATTER WHEN THE BOKS HAVE WON
Former All Black coach John Mitchell, when I was writing his book with him, told me about a prominent New Zealand radio personality - well prominent in Mitch’s time - who in a book about his own career wrote that his perfect ideal was “It’s Sunday morning, the All Blacks have just lost and it is raining in Auckland”.
I understand what the guy was saying. Talk radio in New Zealand buzzes when the All Blacks lose. As I discovered when I was in New Zealand for what remains the All Blacks’ last loss at Eden Park - to the last gasp “try from the end of the world” scored by France in 1994.
It was just before the Bok series there, which had the radio talk back buzzing for different reasons - Bok prop Johan le Roux biting a piece out of New Zealand skipper Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear.
And obviously when it’s raining then there’s more chance that disgruntled All Black fans will be sitting stewing in front of their radio sets in their living rooms rather than out hunting, fishing or surfing.
Those words crossed my mind when driving the N1 between Johannesburg and the Tzanemkomst River Lodge, which is on the banks of the Orange River just outside Colesberg and where I have just had a particularly good sleep.
The sky was moody, right from Joburg in the early morning, where inhabitants were woken up by an unseasonal thunderstorm, and there were frequent rain squalls.
But it wasn’t a “it’s raining and your team has just lost” mood. Instead, quite the opposite. From my stops in the various 1-Stops and Ultra City pit-stops on the journey, it felt like there was a joie de vivre in the air that would have been hard for even non rugby fans to get caught up in. The green and gold was prominent.
BOK FANS DO STILL DRIVE TO GAMES
People do still drive long distances for Bok matches, it isn’t just me. On the eve of the game, at the Pirates Sports Club, Brenden and I bumped into two guys who’d driven up for the FNB Stadium game from Queenstown (Oh, okay, it is Komani now).
That is a long road, even though the N6 that passes through Aliwal North, which gave us Frans Steyn, and meets up with the N1 south of Bloemfontein is these days a good one. The same two guys had travelled to Cape Town the week before.
From experience, the mood on the roads can be the opposite when the Boks lose. In 2000 I drove back from the 20-15 defeat suffered by the Boks to England in Bloemfontein and every place I stopped, like Colesberg, it felt like there were people moaning about the then coach Nick Mallett.
In retrospect that funereal atmosphere was a bit over the top. That England team went on to win the World Cup three years later, beating all comers in the process, and with respect to the players who played under Nick that year, it wasn’t South Africa’s best cycle of players.
PETULA CLARK. YES, PETULA CLARK
What helps further lift the mood when driving the day after a big Bok win are the regional radio stations. Driving from Joburg to Cape Town is always interesting to me in the sense that the stations that flit across your dial as you come into range do tell you a lot about the places where they are situated.
There was a very different vibe and feel to Highveld (if they still call it that - I am referring to what hit me when I found 94.7 FM) to OFM, which is the station I listened to from somewhere beyond Kroonstad.
Before Kroonstad everything was hip and happening, maybe too much for someone born in 1965. After Kroonstad, well let’s just stay there were a few blasts from the past, and not just the music. Tony Blewett was presenting, and I remember him as a 604 radio jock from the 1980s. Assuming it is the same Tony Blewett.
Then after midday the old music really started to flow, with the songs kind of reflecting what I’d expect to come out of Bloemfontein on a Sunday. There were more recent oldies, like Hall and Oates, and Supertramp (yes, it was raining again), and for those who remember SA music also Lesley Rae-Dowling and Pierre de Charmoy (I was introduced to him after a Durban game once and I am really glad he lived on - you will get it if you remember his hit). And Robin Auld.
But there were also hits that went way back. The Carpenters. A hit from 1973. Yes, the Carpenters. And I am not being negative about them. And then, wait for it, Petula Clark. Yes, Petula CLARK!! No, I wasn’t from the Petula Clark era, ‘Downtown’ was brought out in the year I was born, which I have already mentioned. 1965. But I mention it as an indication of the variety of oldness. And no, I am not being negative, i loved it.
It is a Monday morning so the radio station that will accompany me from here until around Beaufort West, which is about 340 km distant, Algoa, probably won’t be focusing so much on oldies. But unless something has changed, it does just somehow reflect the vibe of the area it covers.
Given that they broadcast from the Boardwalk on the Gqeberha beachfront, it always feels impressive to me that you can pick them up in places like Colesberg, Richmond and Hanover - all so far removed from the day to day routine of the people of Nelson Mandela Bay or for that matter East London, or whatever it is called now.
Rugby people associated with the road ahead? None that spring immediately to mind, but Beaufort was the birthplace, and final resting place from recall, of Professor Christiaan Barnard. No, not a rugby player, but someone that, like Rassie, Siya and the Boks, all of us South Africans can be proud to have had as a countryman.