STRIKING IT RICH: There are no pills for stupidity

DREAMLINER BECAME A NIGHTMARE

Given the quality of the game we saw between the Springboks and All Blacks in Johannesburg last weekend, travelling there by bus was well worth it.

I can’t understand why the public announcer constantly had to mimic the voice of the legendary Hugh Bladen, for surely, he has his own voice he can work with, but that didn’t detract from an electric atmosphere and a high tempo and intensity game to boot. As an overseas blogger who experienced it for the first time put it, “That was wild!”

It was, and it was worth spending 41 hours in two separate buses to experience it.  And my mode of travel saved money. Just think about it - I was away from home for seven nights, but I spent only five of those nights under a roof and between brick and mortar. The other two nights were on the bus. A saving if ever there was one!

However, seeing I gave the Dreamliner such a big punt in my diary entry last week, it would be remiss of me not to complete the story by mentioning the journey back to Cape Town. Just in case there are people who read last week’s column and felt that I was some kind of bus messiah who ought to be followed, let it be said there’s been a change of perspective.

Instead of following me, which would turn out to be as big a folly as that committed by the followers of the Graham Chapman character in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, rather take a cue from the Frankie Goes to Hollywood hit from the 1980s, ‘Relax’. In other words, “Don’t do it”.

The Dreamliner that took me to Joburg at the start of the Bok/All Black week was a good way to travel. The seats recline into something resembling a bed, the cabin is spacious and it resembles a Business Class or even First Class cabin on a jumbo jet. You can sit there and zone out for 20 hours, watching the sun set over the Karoo while sipping on a still mineral water, and see the moon climb into the sky somewhere near Kimberley in the early hours of the morning. Or you can do some work, for there’s plenty of space to position your laptop.

But that was the journey up. Unfortunately, it turns out that the old saying that “what goes up must come down” applies in more ways than one to a bus journey up and down the N1/N12 between Cape Town and Johannesburg. While I specifically asked the lady, I did the booking with if it was a Dreamliner in both directions, it turned out that wasn’t the case.

It was a very different bus that greeted me at Johannesburg’s Park Station at lunch time on the day after the game. The effects of the evening before were still hovering, so it crossed my mind I might be imagining it.
So as I boarded I asked the bus driver: “I thought this was supposed to be a Dreamliner.” “It’s not,” was his stating the bleeding obvious response. Clearly there was no point in pressing him any further, he just drives the bus he’s directed to drive, he’s not responsible for the executive decisions that irked several other passengers who were under the same impression as me - we were supposed to be on a Dreamliner.
“This happens often,” said one lady who told me she’d done about 20 trips between Cape Town and Johannesburg in the past year.

If it does happen often goodness knows why she keeps going back. If the Dreamliner was Business Class, the bus we travelled back on was configured like the economy class cabin of a budget airline. It was from Dreamliner to Nightmare. And the bus was full too, making the forthcoming journey seem an interminable proposition as we set out along the N12 towards Kimberley on a hot Sunday afternoon, made more so by the insistence of some passengers that the bus wait for them at stops so they could finish smoking.

I was on the bus partly because I didn’t want to fly, but realising we were heading through Kimberley, there was a brief brainwave - I could get dropped off there and fly the rest of the way. So, I went online, only to discover that the cheapest flight from Kimberley to Cape Town on Monday morning was just under 3K. The most expensive was over 7K. Are you being serious?

Anyway, a flight would have to be combined with a night in a hotel. Stuff that, I will have to stick with the bus. And I did, but I was acutely aware of the fact that I had sold bus travel to so many people in my week in Joburg, and this wasn’t what I had sold them. I felt stupid, and the words that kept playing through my brain were those often repeated by a good mate: “There are no pills for stupidity!”

LIVERPOOL MADE IT BETTER BUT WITHER THE CURRIE CUP

Okay, it did get better. Maybe I was just too used to the Dreamliner and just needed to get used to cattle class level of economy luxury. Later in the trip it started to get better and I even imagined I might be enjoying myself. But that only happened at about 4am, when Cape Town was getting nearer and there was proverbial light coming towards me through the tunnel.

And it was good watching Liverpool thump Manchester United 3-0 (what a seamless transition between two managers it is becoming on Merseyside) on the DSTV app on my phone while the bus was travelling through places like Wolmaranstad and Warrenton.

Before that I tried Western Province’s Currie Cup game against the Pumas in Stellenbosch. It was probably a fair enough game, and the domestic competition does have its place, but sorry, I do wish there were pills for stupidity that could be given to the people who decided the competition should be played during what should be South African rugby’s off-season.

Note that I say this in my personal capacity, but there is just too much rugby, and it hurts the product. It was hard to focus on the Stellenbosch game, and after a while I decided looking out the bus window at the Free State maize fields and sheep was far more interesting.

Of course, that probably saved me from an exorbitant data bill. But if South African rugby is going to align itself with the northern hemisphere season, it needs also to align itself with the northern hemisphere off-season. It may not be happening yet, but the 12 month season is going to catch up with South African rugby.
The day before the Test match was spent at the Pirates club in Greenside. 

Thanks very much to Barry Skjoldhammer, he of Gauteng cricket administration fame, for allowing me to free load on his generosity, although it wasn’t by choice. He was pretty forceful about keeping me topped up. Barry, if you are reading this, in a few weeks I will buy you a beer or two in Nelspruit, a place I will NOT be travelling to by bus.

Anyway, before I digress too much, John Plumtree was the guest speaker, both in his capacity as Sharks coach and as ex-All Black assistant.

Of course he has to be polite, even in that rugby club at Friday lunchtime environment, but Plum made it pretty clear, both in private conversation with me and when expertly and entertainingly interviewed by former Bok and Scotland hooker John Allan, that he thinks playing rugby for 12 months of the year is unsustainable.

ELLIS PARK IS NOT A FORTRESS AGAINST KIWIS

Plumtree made it pretty plain he was nervous about the Bok chances against the All Blacks. He felt that Razor Robertson had selected the right pack, and with Eben Etzebeth benched and Pieter-Steph du Toit playing front lock plus a few other experimental selections, the All Blacks would go into the game feeling they had a chance of winning.

And he clearly spent enough time in the All-Black camp to know their psyche and that “a chance” could easily be translated into “a good chance”.

And while a journalist is supposed to be neutral, I am also a South African, and I would have to be a robot to completely eschew patriotism. So I was nervous too. The All Blacks had chosen some tough players, particularly in their back row, and Ben-Jason Dixon, much though he is rightly rated as one for the future, was playing his first game against the All Blacks, and Jasper Wiese hadn’t played in months. Ruan Nortje was still relatively untested at the highest level.


It was also Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s first game against senior Kiwi opposition, and fullback Aphelele Fassi has played only a handful of Tests, so it was easy to see possible chinks in the Bok armoury.
On the subject of Feinberg-Mngomezulu though, my fear wasn’t that he’d be intimidated by the occasion. In fact, the exact opposite. He isn’t only a precocious talent, he is also possessed of a precocious mind, and a bit like his Stormers teammate Warrick Gelant, the fear is always more that his confidence will lead him to try too much and be too adventurous.

A tendency for Sacha to overplay has occasionally cost the Stormers and it may be why he has yet to be a first-choice selection there when everyone, meaning everyone including Damian Willemse, is fit. But with every passing game those fears are subsiding. He is the real deal, and not just a future world class star, but already in that category.

His X-factor in general play is supplemented by the X-factor of his prodigious place-kicking boot. That Frans Steyn siege gun kick from his own 10 metre line would have done a lot to settle Bok nerves after the fast All Black start.

A start by the way I saw coming, as anyone who read my preview would testify. If there is a nonsense phrase in South African rugby it is “Fortress Ellis Park”, at least when applied to Bok games against the All Blacks.

The Kiwis used to struggle there but in recent years they have grown to love playing there. Indeed, they love the highveld, for you have to throw in wins they have scored at Loftus (2018) and at Soccer City (2010 and 2012) into their run of success on the highveld over the past decade and a half.

Let’s not forget either the Jan van Riebeeck game in 2002, when John Mitchell’s All Blacks won 52-16 at Loftus. One of the reasons for the All Black enjoyment of the highveld was aptly summed up by Mitchell’s assistant Robbie Deans after that game - he spoke about the firm surface and dry conditions. And okay, this doesn’t apply these days with the 5pm kick-offs, but also the sunlight. 


Actually, speak to any coach based on the coast who takes his team to play at altitude, playing afternoon games, when the sun is out, at Loftus and Ellis Park is far harder than playing under floodlights.

RUGBY’S VERSION OF THE ASHES

It has been spoken about for a while but now it is being given bones - it looks almost certain that the Boks and All Blacks will play a Test series against each other and undertake proper tours every four years, starting with the New Zealanders coming here in 2026. That will be like manna from Heaven for traditional rugby watchers who remember the old days of tours and proper series.

Speaking to various administrators around the Bok hotel in Cape Town this week, it appears there is a massive appetite for it. The departure from the humdrum of the annual Castle Lager Rugby Championship, which has effectively become a battle just between New Zealand and South Africa anyway, and looks destined to become even more so, will be universally welcomed.

We’re hearing that while SA want to incorporate the Championship into the Bok/AB series, with one or two of the games counting for Championship points, the New Zealanders are arguing for the Championship to be scrapped in those years.

If that’s an indication that they want out of that competition altogether it might not be a bad thing, although a single round of games incorporated into the mooted World Rugby Championship, or whatever the 12 nation league is to be called, might not be a bad idea. It will undermine the interest in the series being played every four years if every other year the Boks and All Blacks are playing each other twice, as they are now.

If the “less is more” mantra is observed, the series will develop into an iconic event like the British and Irish Lions series, something to be looked forward to. I liken it to rugby’s version of crickets The Ashes, although the difference is that Australia and England aren’t as consistently on top of world cricket, or haven’t been in the past few decades, as New Zealand and South Africa have occupied the No1 and No2 positions in global rugby.

ENOUGH BLEATING ABOUT NOTHING

Okay, so was it a try, or wasn’t it? As I was at Ellis Park, I didn’t hear the commentators, and neither did I look at the replays of the Bongi Mbonambi try more than once. To me, it was a try, let’s move on - and maybe some of the match officials felt the same way. It was only later, when going through the New Zealand media reaction online, that it became apparent that there was once again a lot of bleating about the refereeing/TMO decisions in a Bok/All Black game.

This by the way, for those who think it is, is not something new - in the first ever series I was properly aware of as an 11-year-old, the 1976 showdown on SA soil, there was much Kiwi unhappiness at the officiating of one Gert Bezuidenhout of Potchefstroom. It gave rise to one of the rugby quotes that I’ve always remembered just for how sage and wise it was, and it came from the Bok captain Morne du Plessis: “Sure, maybe we were lucky, but then I have played in a lot of games where the opposition were lucky”.

If the roles were reversed last Saturday maybe South Africans would have felt aggrieved and unlucky. For the record, having watched it again, to me it was a try, because it looked like the ball was ripped from Bongi’s grasp. But either way, it wasn’t what cost the All Blacks the game, and I also note that Victor Matfield pointed out on Final Whistle on Thursday night that there was obstruction in the lineout that led to the first All Black try.

If you look hard enough you will find an issue, but my point is that you can’t just say that if the Mbonambi try was awarded you can subtract five points from the South African score, which would give the All Blacks a 27-26 victory. Rugby, and indeed sport, doesn’t work like that. In cricket if you drop the same batsman twice, that does not equate to two wickets missed. 

It is only one.

Missed conversions are in fact the only thing you can do addition or subtraction with. For after a try is awarded, you always go back to halfway and the game is effectively restarted from there. Had Mbonambi’s try not been awarded, the Boks would have surrendered possession, but would still have been in an attacking position. It would have been a different game from there, and the Boks could well have scored not long after that.

Which the All Blacks did after the much disputed disallowed try in the World Cup final. What Kiwis who bleat over that conveniently ignore is that the All Blacks did score a few minutes later. They would not have been in position to score that try had the initial one been awarded.

So, the justification for the Kiwis saying that they were robbed in Paris last October cannot come down to simple addition of the points missed for a disallowed try.

Doing that is surely illogical.

Unfortunately, it is not just New Zealanders who do that, it is a universal thing. But then, as I think I may have said already, there are no pills for stupidity…