Historical perspective: Significance of Italy clashes is usually what came next

The Springbok rugby history against Italy is not a long one, with the first game between the two nations being played in Rome a few months after South Africa’s first World Cup triumph in 1995.

I was at that inaugural game between the Boks and Italy, and it would probably be fair to say that it set a trend for what was to come for most of the games between them that were to follow: It was all about what came next.

Italy were playing against Francois Pienaar’s World Cup champions and that fact ensured that they raised their game in front of a passionate and boisterous crowd at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, still the only time the Boks have played in the Italian capital city.

For a long time the hosts were competitive, which raised the noise levels in the stadium quite a few decibels, and the Boks might have had a few nervous flutters. But what I recall about that game was that even when the South Africans appeared to be struggling, I was pointing out to colleagues in the press box that the Italians would succumb to the slow poison of the visiting scrum.

Which was exactly what happened, with the Boks eventually putting enough daylight between themselves and their opponents not to feel any panic at the finish. What the game did do though was give the team coached by Kitch Christie a bit of a wake-up call, and it perfectly set up what was to come next, which was a thumping victory over England at Twickenham the following week.

That was a week that started in a weirdly perfect way for Christie, who had the old school coaching approach of looking for something external to motivate his team. That came the day after the Italy test, with the Boks arriving at the hotel where their first press conference on English soil was to be held to be informed that the English media had been highly critical of their performance the day before.

Not only that, England had also staged a press conference earlier in the day where Michael Catt, at that point the England flyhalf, had stated that he thought that the Bok captain, Pienaar, was an overrated player.

Someone asked Pienaar about that during the press conference. Pienaar’s eyes widened and he asked the question to be repeated. When it was repeated it was clear he was shocked. Afterwards Christie told some of us travelling SA media that it was the best thing that could have happened: He needed something to get his team going as they’d been a bit complacent against Italy.

PERCY’S SHIFT OF POSITION CAME UP TRUMPS

The next time the Boks were in Italy I was also on tour. The game was in Bologna and it was Nick Mallett’s first as Bok coach. The Boks celebrated the arrival of their new coach by winning 62-31, with many of those points coming in the dying minutes. The significance of that game, which was to start a stupendously successful tour for the Boks, was that a selection shuffle caused by injury was to change the course of two players’ careers.

The Western Province fullback Justin Swart had been selected to wear the No 15, or was touted to do so, but he was ruled out on the eve of the game, prompting Mallett to choose Percy Montgomery in the last line of defence. Montgomery had been selected out of position at centre by Mallett’s predecessor Carel du Plessis and had struggled against the British and Irish Lions and in the Tri-Nations.

However, at fullback he looked far more at home, and ended up scoring a record number of points from that position when the Boks, after a record win over France in Paris and then another excellent performance against England at Twickenham, swamped Scotland at Murrayfield. A prelude to that game was the Scotland coach Jim Telfer, who’d been the Lions assistant when they won in South Africa earlier in the year, approaching some of us hacks after a press conference to ask us what had changed. The answer was fairly unanimous - it was the coach.

ITALY SERIES PRELUDE TO CONTROVERSY

That same coach would have enjoyed the two thumping wins his team scored against Italy in 1999, with the Boks winning 74-3 in Port Elizabeth before posting a record 101-0 win in Durban a week later, but he did not enjoy what came next.

Wings Breyton Paulse and Deon Kayser (as a replacement) had gone on a try-scoring spree in the one-sided test matches but only Paulse had been selected for the tour party to go to Wales for a one-off “summer test” that was staged to celebrate the opening of the new Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

There were good rugby reasons for the selections - the Boks had gone on a long unbeaten run that had equalled a world record before being broken at Twickenham in late 1998 with Pieter Rossouw and Stefan Terblanche doing well on the wing - but there was a huge political backlash to the selections which culminated in the then Sarfu CEO flying to Cardiff to read the team the riot act.

It didn’t go down well with the players and arguably set the trend for a difficult year before partial redemption arrived with a competitive showing at the World Cup in Wales, with the Boks only losing out to an extra time Stephen Larkham drop-goal in the semifinal against the Wallabies.

The Aussies went on to win the tournament, while the Boks won the third/fourth place play-off against New Zealand.

Part of the message delivered by the CEO, Rian Oberholzer, was that there’d never again be an all-white Bok team, and that has remained true since that moment.

CHINKS IN ARMOUR EXPOSED IN 2010

Mallett was coaching Italy when they came to South Africa for two games in 2010. The Boks had won a Lions series and comprehensively thumped all comers in the Tri-Nations the year before, but signs of chinks in their armoury started to become evident when, under the coaching of Peter de Villiers and the captaincy of John Smit, they laboured to victory over Mallett’s Italy in Witbank.

The Boks were more comprehensive victors in East London a week later, but still struggled in the beginning, thus providing the prelude for a disastrous Tri-Nations campaign that saw them slip from being champions to wooden spoonists.

Italy’s only win over the Boks came in Florence in 2016, a result that came towards the end of an already disastrous first year of Allister Coetzee’s tenure, but plunged the Boks into even greater crisis before they were thumped by Wales in Cardiff in the final game.

I will never forget the condescending remarks about the decline of the standards of South African rugby from Welsh fans encountered in the queues for trains back to London at the Cardiff station an hour after the final whistle.

THUMPING WIN IN SHIZOUKA

The Boks were rescued though by Rassie Erasmus, who presided over a one-sided win over Italy in the last meeting between the two teams, which was the World Cup pool game in Shizouka in 2019. Erasmus made that game out to be a knock-out fixture, and rightly so as his team had lost to New Zealand in the opening fixture and would have been out the tournament if they lost.

It was never a race on the night, however, with the Boks effectively using that game to try out their six/two bomb squad split between forwards and backs for the first time. It worked so well that they elected to retain it for the remaining pool game in Kobe before unleashing it again on the tournament hosts, Japan, in the Tokyo quarterfinal. So that was another case of the significance of a game against Italy being what was to come next…

HISTORY OF SA V ITALY GAMES

South Africa 40 Italy 21 - Rome, November 1995

South Africa 62 Italy 31 - Bologna, November 1997

South Africa 74 Italy 3 - Port Elizabeth, June 1999

South Africa 101 Italy 0 - Durban, June 1999

South Africa 60 Italy 14 - Port Elizabeth, June 2001

South Africa 26 Italy 0 - Cape Town, June 2008

South Africa 32 Italy 10 - Udine, November 2009

South Africa 29 Italy 13 - Witbank, June 2010

South Africa 55 Italy 11 - East London, June 2010

South Africa 44 Italy 10 - Durban, June 2013

South Africa 22 Italy 6 - Padua, November 2014

Italy 20 South Africa 18 - Florence, November 2016

South Africa 35 Italy 6 - Padua, November 2017

South Africa 49 Italy 3 - Shizouka (Japan), October 2019 (Rugby World Cup)