Two nights before the Springboks played Ireland in Dublin in 2004 a walk around some of the drinking holes in that city brought an interesting perspective on the psyche of the Irish rugby public.
Earlier in the week Bok coach Jake White had made a press conference statement that was a bit too honest for the sensitive Irish. How many Ireland players would make the Bok team? None.
It went down like a balloon filled with wet cement, and everywhere that night any admission that you were a South African was met with a tirade about Jake and the offence it had caused.
Then came the match which was marked by referee Paul Honiss effectively deciding the game in Ireland’s favour. Those who watched it will surely remember the incident - a penalty was awarded against the Boks, the SA skipper John Smit asked if he could have a moment to talk to his players, but no sooner had the Bok backs been turned away from play than Ireland took a quick tap and scored against a non-existent defence.
It was a ridiculous error that got glossed over by the Irish media in their urgent celebrations of their team’s victory over a Bok team that had arrived in the country as Tri-Nations champions. When the Boks complained publicly about Honiss’s action it was generally dismissed as sour grapes. Such is life.
SO MUCH IRISH HOOEY
After relating that experience, you may understand why all the hooey about the so-called cramp-gate, with Munster fans in a frothy over alleged Hollywoodbets Sharks gamesmanship in the dramatic penalty shoot out ending to Saturday’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship quarterfinal makes me want to giggle.
Because while generalisations are always odious, it feels so typical and so predictable.
I was at Kings Park and wasn’t crazy about the fans booing the Munster kickers, not that it was in any way over the top and it felt like some kickers got respect and others didn’t. And having travelled to those countries, I am convinced the Munster players would have faced down a far greater cacophony of noise had they been playing in front of an Argentinian or French crowd.
As for the supposed gamesmanship on the part of Jaden Hendrikse, if it quacks like a duck and it looks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, so if it looks like a cramp and there’s reason you should have cramp, for after all the scrumhalf had played a full 100 minutes, then it probably is cramp.
It is hard to see what the fuss is about. If a player is injured he doesn’t choose where he falls just like a soldier on a battlefield doesn’t choose where he falls. You die where you stand. And it wasn’t as if Dan Crowley had a shot clock to deal with. What was wrong with waiting for Hendrikse to have his condition dealt with?
On that point, Munster made an error. Crowley is their recognised place-kicker, so they shouldn’t have given him the easy kicks from the middle of the field. That made no logical sense. The shot that was missed by Rory Scannell, from the angle on the right, should have been Crowleys.
MUNSTER NO VIRGINS WHEN IT COMES TO GAMESMANSHIP
Even if there was a bit of Sharks gamesmanship in those moments, it isn’t like Munster are virgins when it comes to that kind of thing. Gamesmanship does happen at the highest levels of professional sport and the Proteas would probably be world T20 champions now if it weren’t for what looked like a feigned injury to an Indian player that slowed down the World Cup final in the Carribean last June.
I heard afterwards that Munster started the verbals and it isn’t hard to believe from a team that had Peter O’Mahoney in it and which unlike the Sharks had had experience of a shoot out before.
Against Toulouse in the Investec Champions Cup a few years ago. The chirps clearly happen in soccer shootouts so why wouldn’t they be transferred to the rugby version of that form of tiebreak?
In the end the most bit of sense on what should really be a non-subject was provided by former Springbok World Cup winning coach Jacques Nienaber, who is now with Leinster.
He’s had plenty of experience of Irish rugby both as an international coach as well as in his current role and a previous one with Munster and he said that the Irish are “masters at sledging”.
He reminded the Ireland media of O’Mahoney’s chirp to Sam Cane in the 2017 British and Irish Lions series against the All Blacks: “You are just a s*** Richie McCaw”.
As Nienaber says, if you listen to the referee mic during a game, it happens all the time, everywhere. So why if it happens on the field is there an expectation that when a game goes to a penalty shoot out it should suddenly turn into a teddy bear’s picnic where everyone is polite and passing each other cups of tea?
The Irish might expect that because it appears, like after White’s press conference in 2004, being offended is what they do. But it is baloney.
HIGHER FINISHER SHOULD ADVANCE IN A DRAWN PLAYOFF
And anyway, what everyone appears to be missing in their rush to talk about what a cruel way a penalty shoot out is to make an exit from a competition, is that Munster were actually lucky to be in a shootout.
For a shoot out should not have been necessary as a tiebreaker. Final log position should have determined that the Sharks went through when extra time ended in a 24-all stalemate.
Think about it - the log positions were decided after 18 matches. The Sharks finished third, Munster ended sixth. The penalty shoot out was probably good for the game in the sense that now suddenly for the first time in a long time South Africans are talking about rugby that doesn’t involve the Springboks, but it wasn’t fair.
The teams that finish higher on the log should be rewarded for their greater consistency over an entire season. That they even have to go into playoffs is to my mind wrong, but I understand it in terms of giving a competition a showpiece ending. Imagine though if Liverpool, after dominating the Premier League, had to play the eighth ranked team, Brighton, in a quarterfinal. That is what happens in the URC.
Finishing higher up should have advantages that go beyond just home ground advantage. It should have been a requirement of the team that finishes sixth that if they want to advance beyond a quarterfinal they have to beat the team that finishes third in the same way that a tied series isn’t enough to take The Ashes away from the holders.
A draw should not have been enough for the team that finished lower on the log. It would have robbed us of a memorable finish that despite everything may have been good for the URC and good for the purposes of drawing crowds to Kings Park, but had the Sharks lost the penalty shoot out it wouldn’t have been an injustice.
When they go to Loftus this weekend, they should be required to win against a Bulls team that finished higher. That would be fair.