Flashback: Gavin Rich's notes from the road

In 2020 at the height of the British and Irish Lions tour, SuperSport's rugby writer Gavin Rich produced a tour diary that reflected on the strange time it was. Here is a trip down memory lane, where Gavin's diary has been brought back to life to remind us just how weird it was.

A VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE

The last time I wrote in this diary or contributed to this series of notes was in a hotel in Tokyo on the Sunday after the World Cup final and at the end of an unforgettable seven-week sojourn in Japan.

Watching the Olympics currently taking place in the same city has brought home how much the world has been changed by the pandemic, with the venues that so many Japanese people were so excited about and looking forward to seeing utilised in the Games standing mostly empty.

There has been some compelling television viewing coming out of the events, none more so than what we saw early on Friday morning when Tatjana Schoenmaker took gold for South Africa and broke the world 200m breaststroke record in the process. But those who are there won’t have the thought of “what might have been” far from their minds.

That was certainly what I thought of as I arrived at Cape Town Stadium last Saturday for the first test between the Springboks and the British and Irish Lions. It was the first game featuring the Boks that I was physically at since the World Cup final, which of course was played in front of a huge crowd amidst a cracking atmosphere at the Yokohama International Stadium on 2 November 2019.

There’d have been a similar atmosphere at Cape Town Stadium had these been normal times. The venue is made for atmosphere, as anyone who has attended any of the editions of the World Sevens Series that have been played there.

It was a clear, still winters day in Cape Town on the day of the game, and the red and green shirts would have been out in force around the Green Point precinct, and I am sure also prominently on display at all the drinking holes and eateries along the entire Atlantic Seaboard. Instead, as one of the UK journalists following the series remarked, around the Waterfront and in the area around the stadium it was almost like there wasn’t a game happening.

Oh yes, there were apparently two Scots dressed in kilts standing outside the stadium (I didn’t see them) but none of the pubs around the venue even advertised the game. There was a good reason for that of course - last Saturday those establishments were still prevented from serving alcohol.

Perhaps the only advantage of having an empty stadium was the ease of getting in and out. You just drive straight into the parking, no hassles at all, and straight out again after the game. Again, no hassles at all.

But I’d buy the traffic and the congestion any day rather than the rather surreal experience of watching such an important game, with the eyes of the rugby world firmly focused on it, in what could almost be described as a village green atmosphere.

REFEREEING HORROR SHOW MORE OBVIOUS ON TV

It wasn’t the type of atmosphere that we were used to before the pandemic, not nearly the kind of atmosphere we saw at the World Cup final or would have expected had the Lions series been played before or after the pandemic. That is not to say though that there is not tension, and perhaps that tension during the tight parts of the game, and towards the end, is felt even more when there is no distracting big crowd to absorb it.

Somehow a Lion series just seems to matter more, it is a bit like a World Cup in that sense. And that just makes it even more disappointing that last week was such a horror show from a refereeing/match officiating point of view.

I must admit the refereeing errors didn’t bug me so much during the game. I even wrote that the Boks didn’t lose because of those errors. Perhaps being there, and not watching on television and paying so much attention to the replays, made them more palatable. And I do think those who say that the disallowed Willie le Roux try cost the Boks the game are missing an important point - the Boks did score a few minutes after that, and surely that cancelled that TMO error out?

Watching on video at home though elicited a much more angry response. To start with the most blatant example, outside maybe of that disallowed try where the TMO’s use of words was all completely wrong (who was “we” and how does “feel” equate with the need for it to be clear and obvious?), there is absolutely no argument against the contention that Hamish Watson should have been yellow carded for his tip tackle on Willie le Roux.

It felt at the time that it was a definite yellow, and the more you watch it or see it replayed on television the more yellow it becomes. It forced Le Roux to leave the field, and while I have long been one who has argued that rugby is becoming over-sanitised in the quest to ensure player safety, this was an incident that warranted a card.

Had Watson been banished from the field for 10 minutes, the result could well have been very different. He would have been off the field from minute 64 to 74. What is concerning though is that if that was not deemed a spear tackle, and the referees are going to be consistent across the series, then surely if a Bok player does something similar on Saturday then it is okay?

In fact, you can take it a step further and say that what happened in the 64th minute of the first test effectively made spear tackles allowable in this series. Well at least allowable in the sense that while you can be penalised for them, as Watson was, it surely wouldn’t be fair, or consistent, if a Bok was sent off for doing the same thing on Saturday?

Now that we’ve watched the clips of the game in minute detail thanks to the leaked video made by Rassie Erasmus, you could make the same argument on no arms tackles (Tom Curry on Faf de Klerk), flankers injuring opposing front-row forwards in the scrum (Curry again) and a host of other things.

It normally takes a lot to convince me that a referee has been influenced by off-field talk through the media, but on the balance of what we saw last week it would be pretty hard to convince me otherwise.

WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER

On the subject of referees or match officials being influenced by coaches making pronouncements in the media, it has been a bit frustrating being part of online press conferences where UK or Irish journalists keep asking questions directed at whether Rassie is out of line for making an issue of the refereeing circus, which it was, that we saw last Saturday.

Who started the whole media focus on referees? Lions coach Warren Gatland did. After the SA game, he bleated about Faf de Klerk’s high tackle that saw him yellow carded and suggested it should have been red. He was then reported to be “fuming”, meaning he had taken some UK media into his confidence, about Jonker’s appointment as TMO.

Admittedly it does feel a bit like Gatland threw a hand-grenade and Rassie responded by detonating an A-bomb, but for goodness sake, why didn’t those who are now questioning whether Rassie should be allowed to air grievances with the refereeing have the same reservations when Gatland did it the previous week? Surely this is a case of what is good for the goose should be good for the gander.

RASSIE’S VIDEO MIGHT BE WHAT WORLD RUGBY NEEDS

Only time will tell whether there are any repercussions against Erasmus for the leaked video, though it is hard to see how he can be guilty of anything given the clips were apparently compiled for the purpose of being sent to officialdom.

But even if there is some kind of repercussion, such as the fine slapped on the Boks after the 2009 series for their ‘Justice4Bakkies’ armbands worn in the third test supporting their stalwart lock Bakkies Botha, who was unjustly suspended for a text book clean out of Welsh prop Adam Jones, maybe the video leak will turn out to be a good thing.

For the role that referees play in determining big games has long been a blight on the game and is a world rugby problem. We just need to go back to the Boks’ opening game of the 2019 World Cup, where they lost to New Zealand, for another instance where the match officiating played an inordinate role in determining the outcome of that game.

French referee Jerome Garces awarded scrum penalties to New Zealand when they should have been awarded to the Boks, and they changed the course of that game. Erasmus took it up with World Rugby and with Garces after that, and the fact that Garces was seeing the same picture as Erasmus by the time he had the whistle for the World Cup final weighed heavily in the Bok favour.

But my point is that there is surely a problem when so much depends on what pictures are painted for the referee, and when so much influence can be brought to bear by what is said in the media. Which it was last Saturday, and could be this coming Saturday too.

FEELING SORRY FOR SECOND TEST REF

You do have to feel sorry for the second test referee Ben O’Keefe in all of this. As I’ve already suggested, tip tackles for a start are now legal, or at least can’t be a sending off offence. If I was him I’d be so intimidated by it all that I would be scared to make any calls at all. There was a referee that once happened too. He was also a New Zealander. Bryce Lawrence. Remember him?

Lawrence wasn’t crooked, he was just a deer caught in the headlights in that infamous 2011 World Cup semi-final in Wellington where he earned such global notoriety.

Which is just another example to pump up the previous point. Lawrence cost the 2011 Boks a place in the semifinal and blew them out of the World Cup. Perhaps the highlighting of the problem inherent in that is long overdue. If Erasmus is sanctioned, his actions may still not have been in vain.