Lions retrospective: Jaguars wake-up call galvanised Morne’s 1980 Boks

If the Georgia matches that serve as a warm-up for the forthcoming British and Irish Lions series shake off the rust and provide the necessary reality check to help them beat the tourists it won’t be the first time it has happened in the history of Springbok rugby.

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Back in 1980, in what admittedly was still very much the amateur era in rugby union, Morne du Plessis’ team found themselves going the rugby season that featured the series against Bill Beaumont’s Lions having played even less recent international rugby than is the case with Siya Kolisi’s team now.

A period of 20 months separates the current Boks from their last match, which was the 32-12 win over England in the 2019 Rugby World Cup final. In 1980 the Boks hadn’t played a proper test series for a period of four years since their win over Andy Leslie’s 1976 All Blacks. Their only appearance as a team in those four years was in a festival game to celebrate the opening of a revamped Loftus Versfeld in 1977 where they beat a scratch World XV.

REVENGE FOR 1974 WAS PARAMOUNT MOTIVATION

With memories of the 1974 tour still fresh in many minds, revenge was very much the Bok motivation in that series. The 3-0 humiliation at the hands of Willie John McBride’s team six years earlier had shocked South African rugby to it’s core and while they’d kept their unbeaten home series record against the All Blacks intact two years after that, a win over the 1980 Lions was seen as an imperative if the Springboks were to properly regain respect.

The tour came at the end of a decade when the Lions were their most formidable. They’d beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand three years before thrashing South Africa, and their loss in the 1977 series to the Kiwis - I can remember waking up to listen to those games on the radio with my late father - was a narrow one.

I did follow the 1976 series as an 11 year old - actually probably still 10 when the series was played - but I was more switched onto the media build-up in 1980. There was saturation coverage that started several months before the tour, in that year’s edition of what was then still the Five Nations. England won it, and it was off the back of that Beaumont was chosen to captain the tourists.

When you’re young it’s easy to be drawn in by the media hype and be influenced by it. The way the UK media were building up it seemed the Lions would be every bit as good as they were six years earlier. In South Africa, there was rightful trepidation. After all, four years without playing a proper test match is a sod of a long time.

A PUSHOVER TRY AT THE WANDERERS

That was where the 1980 version of Georgia, the South American Jaguars, captained by the legendary flyhalf Hugo Porta and really the Argentina Pumas national team in all but name, helped out. They came to South Africa for a two test tour before the Lions arrived, and they provided the necessary wake-up call that was needed.

The first test, which was Naas Botha’s debut game, was played at the Wanderers cricket ground in Johannesburg. Ellis Park was being rebuilt at the time in preparation for a 1982 reopening. As always, there were high hopes for the Boks among the rugby supporting South African public - remembering of course this was a divided nation back then so it was only a section of the population - and I had visions of the Boks doing to the Jaguares what they’d done to the World XV in 1977, when they won 45-24.

But it didn’t turn out that way. The Boks won 18-9 but somehow it seemed like a flat win. The newspaper headlines and stories the next day were dominated by one thing - the unedifying sight of the Bok scrum being pushed back. That was how the Jaguares scored their one try in the match: It was a push-over try.

The Pumas of course were famed for their bajada scrumming technique. It was the signature of South American rugby. But still, no-one expected the Boks to ever concede a push-over try in a home test. And to the little known and under-hyped Jaguares at that.

I can recall centre Peter Whipp, a Western Province player who had done well against the All Blacks four years earlier, impressing in that Wanderers test, but otherwise the media talk was also about how antiquated and conservative the Bok game-plan was.

And that talk was carried over into the next match, which was at King’s Park and was the first test match I ever watched live in the stadium. The Boks did slightly better in that game, and got the South Americans back for what they’d done the week before by forcing a push-over try towards the end that clinched a 24-9 win. If my memory serves me correctly, it was the skipper, Du Plessis, who dotted down.

GYSIE’S SELECTION PROVIDED THE SWITCH

It was not a good game though, and the rugby the Boks played was dour and unimaginative. It was only when Gysie Pienaar, father of Ruan, came on as an injury replacement -there weren’t tactical substitutions in those days - in the second half that there seemed to be flair in the Bok backline.

And that’s where the Jaguares games proved so useful in preparing the Boks for what was to come. Pierre Edwards, the starting fullback against the Jaguares, was a Northern Transvaaler who I remember being as safe as a house in the last line of defence. He caught everything, he was the Rock of Gilbratar for his provincial team.

But after the Jaguares series, and thanks to Pienaar’s cameo, the penny dropped that the Boks would need to play a more attacking game if they were to stand any chance of beating the Lions, and that required a counter-attacking fullback like Pienaar who could insert himself in the line.

Whipp was injured in that series and he was replaced by the exciting David Smith, a Zimbabwean, and in the first test at Newlands, played on 31 May 1980 and I remember that because I recall being on the side of the road supporting the Comrades Marathon (always staged on Republic Day public holiday) earlier in the day, the Boks shocked the Lions with their approach.

TRIES AND MORE TRIES WON IT FOR BOKS

In fact, those who remember Naas Botha as only a kicking flyhalf, and English rugby writer John Reason nicknamed Botha ‘Nasty Booter’ in expectation of him fulfilling that role, might consider this little fact: The Boks scored five tries to one, and yet they only won the game with a try from scrumhalf Divan Serfontein at the death. The final score was 26-22. Tony Ward, the Irish flyhalf, kicked what was then a record number of points for the Lions to keep them in the game.

Old timers might in particular remember the try scored by Bok left wing Gerrie Germishuys, the one where the ball bobbled tantalisingly on his finger tips as he rounded the Lions defence. Earlier in the game Rob Louw, a young whippet on the flank, scored a try, and all round the Boks were a different, more enterprising unit in comparison to the one that plodded to victory against the Jaguares.

The wake-up call had been heeded, the necessary changes had been made, and fullback Pienaar was very much the star, particularly in the second test of that series, which the Boks won 26-19 in Bloemfontein (there were six points for a converted try in those days and the Boks led 26-15 before the Lions scored a late consolation effort).

TOUR GAMES ERODED SOME OF THE LIONS’ AURA

Before the series started though the Lions had been softened up quite a bit in some of the provincial games, with some of the aura of the 1974 tour being eroded when Natal, one of two games I watched live on that tour with the other being the game against the SA Barbarians, took them to the last minutes before conceding defeat to a John Carlton try at King’s Park.

Natal wasn’t the powerhouse rugby province it was to become in the 1990s and then into the professional era as the Sharks. What I remember about that experience as a 14-year-old was queueing in the early hours of the morning weeks before the match waiting for the ticket offices to open at King’s Park, and the electric atmosphere and anticipation at the ground on match day, particularly when Mort Mortassagne, a loosehead prop they called Mole for his ability to burrow into loose scrums, burrowed his way over for the Natal try.

That Natal side was captained by Wynand Claassen, who was part of a back row that also featured Wallaby Mark Loane and a blonde-haired openside flank, Wally Watt, who played out of his skin in that game. The Durban press was adamant Watt should get a look in for the Boks after that performance but if I am correct, when Springbok colours finally did come his way it was years later in the very different sport of salt water angling.

INJURIES HAD BIG IMPACT

That Natal side went through the entire regular season, until an out of season game against France where finally changes had to be made, by fielding the same 15 for their entire campaign. Which was very different to what the Lions, who were also pushed hard by Free State in Bloemfontein before the first test, experienced on that tour: They lost flanker Stuart Lane just 55 seconds into the first tour game against a bruising Eastern Province team at the old Boet Erasmus Stadium in Port Elizabeth.

Injuries were to be a constant problem for that Lions squad and it was one of the reasons Ward, probably third or fourth ranked among their flyhalves before the tour, played in the first test. Some of the star players who were trumpeted as potential series winners in the many months of intense media build-up, such as the strongly built Welsh scrumhalf Terry Holmes, were injured.

Would it have made any difference to the end result? Who knows, but none of the Bok fans who sat in the rain in Port Elizabeth to see the South Africans clinch the series with an audacious try in the third test were complaining or getting engaged in that debate.

To refresh memories, the Boks were losing that game until wing Germishuys took a quick throw-in to flanker Theuns Stofberg, who returned the ball to him and he went over in the left corner. Botha converted from near the touchline to give the Boks a 12-10 win that at least partially laid the ghost of 1974 to rest.

I say partially because the Lions were really good in the final dead rubber test at Loftus Versfeld and prevented what many were hoping for: A 4-0 series whitewash. The magnanimous among us, and that included my late father, for I remember him saying as much, were able to admit though that the 1980 Lions played well enough in that series to deserve at least one victory.