Walking away from the Springbok hotel in the Gqeberha seafront suburb of Summerstrand after the team announcement press conference it was hard to imagine anywhere else you’d want to be.
It was a warm afternoon, very different to the squally conditions that greeted me after my drive from Cape Town on Sunday, and the Indian Ocean was a picture of tranquility as the sun started to set. Earlier there had been dolphins surfing the waves just metres off shore.
It was certainly a far cry from the brown mush of a sea that the Barbarians looked onto under angry skies from their hotel in Camps Bay two weeks ago. The peaceful atmosphere around the Bok lodgings on the beachfront are also very different from the bustle of the hotel the national team stays in on the busy and traffic enshrouded Cape Town foreshore in the buildup to a game in that city.
The Marine has become the hotel of choice for the Boks after decades of using the Holiday Inn, the one that used to be known as the Elizabeth Sun in a previous time and which was walking distance from the old Boet Erasmus when that was the venue for big rugby matches in this city.
They stay at Southern Sun hotels for the obvious reason that Southern Sun are among their sponsors, and that hotel group purchased The Marine from the Protea group a few years ago.
WHY THIS GAME IS SPECIAL
But the ambience provided by the PE (there are still enough signs in the city that refer to it as Port Elizabeth although they are getting fewer) beachfront is not the reason the Boks are happy to be here.
I was here for the Argentina games in 2021 and had forgotten one very significant fact - the two tests against the Pumas that followed the British and Irish Lions series were played in an empty Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
Now that the memory has been properly engaged, I recall it as being quite depressing. I spent the week between the two games in Port Alfred, so maybe that was why I forgot the Covid aspect and the restrictions that were in place at that time.
So for the Boks this is the first time they are in the city in normal circumstances since they won a Castle Lager Rugby Championship game against Australia here in 2018. That’s a long time to be away from the fans many of the Bok squad members consider to be their people as it is where they grew up.
Coach Rassie Erasmus spent the first 18 years of his life in nearby Despatch and would have watched his first big games at the old Boet, which mercifully is no longer the dilapidated wreck it became after the new stadium was built and it ceased to be the Eastern Province home ground, and has now disappeared almost completely.
Bok skipper Siya Kolisi was raised here and educated at Grey High so it was understandable that he was desperate to play in Saturday’s game. Mzwandile Stick, the assistant coach, is from here, the manager Charles Wessels is from here, wing Makazole Mapimpi is from the area. There’s an endless list of people involved with the Boks for whom Saturday is a special occasion.
From memory, there was a great vibe at the stadium when the Wallabies were here seven years ago and judging from my experience at the Stormers’ Champions Cup game against Toulon last December, when 26 000 turned up on the same weekend that there was a cricket test at St George’s Park, Saturday should be a special experience.
A SHAME THERE’S NO TEAM FOR LOCALS TO SUPPORT
I know I make this point every time I am here, and it is partly because I spent so much time watching Eastern Province play at the Boet when I was at university in Grahamstown, but Mapimpi summed up what was different about a PE game.
He reminded us, not that the local journalists present would have needed reminding, that unlike most other local venues the Boks play at, the people of this city don’t have a franchise team to support every other week.
More's the pity. When the Southern Kings played in Super Rugby under the coaching of current Bok assistant coach Deon Davids, who is another one with a PE connection, and before that Alan Solomons, there were big crowds turning out.
With this region being such a fertile breeding ground for Bok stars there really should be an attempt made to satisfy the obvious rugby appetite of the people who live here. Actually, let's call it a sporting appetite.
The one sports team the people of Gqeberha do have to support is Aiden Markram’s Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the BetwaySA20 and they turn out in their droves for St Georges Park games and have become what is known as The Orange Army.
The Stormers are talking about bringing at least one game here every year, but one game isn’t enough. Cape Town is also the Stormers’ home and is more than 800 kilometres, and an 80-litre tank of petrol away. Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is an impressive venue that should be busier than it is.
GLOBAL SEASON IS OVERDUE
There was a certain sameness about two of the games we watched last weekend. An understrength France team pushed New Zealand all the way in Dunedin, and if you looked at the Pretoria test and isolated the second half, then an understrength Italy side punched well above its weight in that game too.
For both France and Italy there were plenty of positives to take away from the experience. The French team included several players who have excelled in the formidable France under-20 teams of the past few years and their performance at the Forsyth Barr Stadium was a loud warning to the Boks ahead of the 2027 World Cup. We knew it already, but France has created impressive depth.
And Rassie was happy to admit that the new players in the Italy team surprised him at Loftus. He reckons now that the Italian squad for their trip was selected as much around a desire to look at the future as to rest the key players who were left at home.
Yet while all of this is true, and it is also completely understandable given the packed rugby schedule why teams do travel understrength at this time of the year, the key stakeholders in the sport, namely the spectators, are being sold short.
The Kiwi commentators appeared to be struggling a bit in building up the Dunedin game. They admitted they didn’t know many of the French players. South Africans would know more about them because of our participation in the Champions Cup, but even for us there were several unknowns.
Imagine if it was a full strength France side in New Zealand. Were that the case the three test series would rival the sometimes overhyped Lions series in Australia for interest. And we wouldn’t get the ridiculous situation where the All Blacks break a losing sequence against France that extends back over a few years and yet their public reacts as if they lost.
Which was similar to what happened here after the Pretoria game, although the expectation of a big Bok victory would still have been there even had Italy come here full strength.
Using bilateral series outside of World Cups to develop for those global events has become the norm in international white ball cricket. It is very rare for teams to be full strength in ODIs and T20 internationals and it is why, with the exception of freak events like the 438 game at the Wanderers in 2006, games in those formats that take place outside of World Cups don’t stick in the memory.
Rugby can’t afford to go the same way, with the World Cup every four years being the only meaningful test and determinant of the sport’s global order. The reason nations are electing to travel understrength needs to be addressed, and the only way to do that is to do what should have been done years ago - World Rugby needs to establish a global season. Enough already.
JAKE’S COACHING ISN’T WHAT FAILED HIM
So what many thought was inevitable has happened, and Jake White’s stint at the Vodacom Bulls has ended prematurely. There were rumours bubbling under the surface for a while that all was not well in the camp, but the Bok World Cup winning coach’s exit from Loftus was still a shock as he was a successful coach at the Bulls.
Sure, he may not have guided the Pretoria union/franchise to any trophies outside of those won in the Covid years, but look at where the Bulls were when he took over from Pote Human and where they are now and it is chalk and cheese. Three Vodacom United Rugby Championship finals in the space of four years, and a second place log finish in two of those years, is not to be quibbled at and places the Bulls at the top table in club/franchise rugby.
And sorry, while the sensitive players might not like him publicly speaking the truth, he was 100 per cent on the money when pointing to the reasons his team came second to Leinster, and why competing with the French heavyweights in the Champions Cup remains a pipe-dream rather than a realistic prospect.
Jake had legitimate gripes and if those making the decisions that could change things aren’t listening, what other alternative did he have but to air his grievances in the media. It shouldn’t have been viewed as personal.
Yet those of us who have watched Jake’s career unfold would not have been surprised that his effective ambulance job for the Bulls, to use the words once used by another World Cup winning coach, Kitch Christie, is not going to be followed through for his full contracted term.
Because like his former mate Eddie Jones, and like current England women’s coach John Mitchell before he changed his approach through life coaching, he demands and drives high standards that make it difficult to sustain because those around him find it hard to live with.
A book could be written about why Jones, the former Wallaby and England coach now in charge of Japan, had so many different assistant coaches come and go. I was phoned by an English newspaper just before he was axed from the England job to canvas my view on Jones as a coach. I told him that the perception here is that Eddie is a very good coach but that he is a rugby obsessive and that makes it hard for the average Joe to work for him.
Yet while there are some naysayers, there are still England players who played under Jones who continue to publicly extol his virtues as a coach even though they might not be as complimentary about him as a human being. When Jake coached the Sharks a Bok playing for the Durban team told me that “Jake is one of the biggest dxxx I know but he is also one of the best coaches I’ve ever had.”
DEMANDING MANAGEMENT STYLE
Why Jake was unpopular when he coached the Sharks in 2014 was partly, or even largely, because he took his employees out of their comfort zone. When he arrived in Durban he told his assistants and the players that as rugby was their profession they would have to be at Kings Park for what most would consider the usual working hours during the week - in other words eight or nine to five.
It didn’t go down well and from what I was told, neither did his demanding management style. But he did coach the Sharks in that one season to their only win in the SA Shield in Super Rugby, and he was the coach when a Sharks team reduced to 14 men beat Crusaders in Christchurch, something that hadn’t been done by any SA team for decades even with 15 men.
White can coach but maybe, because of the standards he demands, and again like Jones, he has to be engaged by teams that need to be saved. Like he did with the Boks in 2004. When he took over the national team was at its lowest possible ebb after the disastrous 2003 season that included the infamous Kamp Staaldraad fiasco, a 50 point defeat to the All Blacks and a quarterfinal exit after a poor World Cup performance.
Yet in his first season the Boks won the Tri-Nations and after a blip in 2006 they won the World Cup in 2007.
There are few better Mr Fixits in the game than White, and while it is obvious that the Welsh problems extend way beyond just the national team, if I was running Wales rugby I’d have been on the phone to him once it was clear he was leaving the Bulls.
The most recent URC season did show there is at least some talent in Wales and maybe Jake could mould them into a team that is at least half decent. As a coach who deals in trophies he’d be unlikely to take the job, but it is a thought.
LIONS ARE BIG BUT NOT THE PINNACLE
There is an obvious need for the Australian rugby commentators to sell the sport over there, but keeping on referring to a British and Irish Lions game as the pinnacle in rugby, something that can’t be exceeded in importance, is a bit over the top. Yes it is big, but surely a Rugby World Cup is bigger.
It will be interesting to see how the Lions go against the Brumbies later on Wednesday now that coach Andy Farrell appears to have arrived at his test team. It is a strong side, and they have a carrier if Ollie Chessum can find his missing form. They just need to be more direct in their attack. In their games so far they’ve been too lateral.
If they get those things right, and with the Wallabies now having lost their flyhalf Noah Lolesio, who was injured in a very uninspiring game against Fiji, my money remains on a 3-0 win for the Lions in the series. But it won’t be the pinnacle of achievement for the Lions and if you disagree look at where Australia are ranked right now.