THE SUN DID RISE ON SUNDAY
Back in the day when my day job was with The Argus newspaper in Cape Town, and beyond that when I still wrote columns on a freelance basis for their weekend editions, there was a column I started repeating almost as routine every time the Stormers hosted a Super Rugby playoff game.
They love the Stormers down in the Cape. It is the one region where the premier club side is loved almost as much as the Springboks are, and that has been sustained into the modern era by John Dobson’s clever “Make Cape Town smile” mantra.
But back in the day, when South African teams were participating in Super Rugby, there was a horrible trend that developed. In the years that they made the playoffs, there was always considerable expectation. And when they were hosting overseas teams, they also started as overwhelming favourites.
I mean, teams like the Highlanders (1999), the Crusaders (a few times), the Chiefs and Brumbies had to travel across several time zones and through several airport transition lounges to get to Cape Town. Even the Sharks, who had to fly from a quarterfinal in Brisbane in 2012 - and won!
They had to do the journey in the space usually of less than a week, so surely the Stormers had to win? But more often than not they didn’t. And every time it left a pall of gloom hanging over the city and the Cape rugby community.
So when that scenario had become a trend that became impossible to ignore, I wrote a column before one of those playoff games reminding Stormers fans that no matter what happened that day, the sun would still rise the next morning. That Cape Town remained a great city to live in regardless of the rugby team’s empty trophy cabinet.
And then came the proactive bit, where I became a head doctor for the masses: I suggested that if the Stormers lost, the fans should just put on U2’s “It’s a Beautiful Day” and play it over and over until the message sank in.
I had a similar feeling before this weekend’s first Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry test at Ellis Park. There was so much expectation among South African fans, even fellow podcasters and other rugby people, that the Boks would start off the series in imperious fashion.
But when you are playing the All Blacks, you are not playing against a Mickey Mouse team, and no matter where the game is played, they always have a chance of winning. Against any opponent. It is why we South Africans don’t like the ridiculous 2027 RWC draw that likely pits the Boks against the All Blacks in the quarterfinal. It’s also why the Kiwis don’t like it, for the same theory works in the opposite direction. Regardless of form, that game will be close to a 50/50 call.
Bok coach Rassie Erasmus was a dissenting voice last week. He reminded everyone at a press conference that Ellis Park wasn’t do-or-die for his team. He felt the series would be won later in the piece. Did he have a premonition of what was coming? Or was he making a point to the All Blacks - if you are going to beat us, you have to beat us this week, or you have no chance in the series?
Perhaps a bit of both. Maybe he knew there’d be rust. But while the sun did rise over the Johannesburg suburb of Linden on Sunday, and how gloriously it did, and the African sky was so blue and the dry air so warming, there also wasn’t a need for the season-ending depression that greets your team’s exit from a season-long competition.
Rassie is right. This series is just beginning. The All Black resistance to the ferocious physicality of the Bok assault at Ellis Park was freaky and would be humanly impossible to repeat in too many successive weeks. It’s why, while Cape Town might still be a tricky one for the Boks, and they can’t repeat their nervy performance of last year’s return test there against the Wallabies, when they were also looking for a response to a disappointing Ellis Park defeat, I still can’t see the Boks actually losing this series.
For Rassie and his Boks there is no time to dwell on the one that got away or, to put it more accurately, given away. In the words of the former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, “we go again”.
WHAT AN OCCASION
The Boks may have lost, but Ellis Park was the perfect place to stage the inaugural test of what is set to become rugby’s version of The Ashes in cricket. As visiting journalist Alex Lowe, the rugby correspondent of The Times in the UK, and therefore fortunate to be enjoying the game as a neutral, put it to us afterwards, the atmosphere was several levels up from what he experienced when he was here for the England test that started the Nations Championship on 4 July.
And that says something because he said he enjoyed that atmosphere too. The Boks against the All Blacks is special, and this series is also a level up from every other year when either the Boks go to New Zealand, as they did last year, or the All Blacks come here for two Rugby Championship games.
I was reminded of that when I brushed past the great Richie McCaw on the way to my seat in the press box. Dan Carter, the legendary flyhalf, was in the media centre. So apparently was his dad (I had no idea what his father looked like; someone pointed it out to me). Of course another legend, Sean Fitzpatrick, was there to carry out the New Zealand trophy before kick-off, in tandem with Gary Teichmann, who brought out the South African half.
By the time kick-off arrived the atmosphere in the stadium was electric, and loud to the point of being intimidating. The Bok fans had come to see their team win, of that there was no doubt. And yet the pocket of Kiwi supporters near the press box was loud too, and by the end they had good reason to be.
And here’s the thing I shouldn’t have said to Alex but might have - the way the South African fans near the press box retained their cheerful demeanour after the final whistle and congratulated the Kiwi fans kind of vindicated my pre-match theory about there being a respect towards New Zealand that there isn’t to other teams, such as England.
WORLD RANKINGS JUSTIFY THE HYPE
So with that win, the All Blacks leapfrogged the Boks to the World Rugby No1 ranking. Which isn’t something that South Africans will enjoy, but it does vindicate the hype around the RGR series. Presumably the No1 ranking will fall back into the Bok hands if they win in Cape Town on Saturday.
So the next few weeks are a constant battle for No 1 spot, a kind of mini world championship alternative to the World Cup. I keep comparing this event with The Ashes, and even in a podcast on Saturday evening came close to referring to the RGR trophy as The Urn, but England versus Australia is rarely No1 in test cricket against No2. You just have to look at the current rankings to confirm that.
SWEET CAROLINE AND A BIG SCRUM MOMENT DON’T COMBINE
Myself and colleague Brenden Nel were looking at each other knowingly before one of the big scrum moments in the game. I can’t remember which one it actually was, as there were several, and the Boks should never have lost given their scrumming superiority, but the reason for the look was that I know his attitude - and so do those who will remember the column he wrote - to the tone deafness of stadium DJs who play happy, dance along music in moments that should ask for a buildup of tension.
And yes, the song playing was Neil Diamond’s "Sweet Caroline”. Yes, there is a break in play before a scrum, and maybe that was the long one where Eben Etzebeth went off to have his shoelace tied.
It was a day overall where it felt that the All Blacks won just because they were smarter, and that moment, or minute or more, was one that I didn’t understand from the Boks. For it was during the sequence of scrum penalties the Boks elected to scrum again near the All Black posts. Surely if your scrum is so dominant, you want to get immediately back into the next one before the opposition unit has a chance to catch breath and regroup.
Or, as may well have happened there, before a member of the All Black pack can get in the ear of the referee and talk to him about the possibility that the South African loose-head is walking around at the scrum? Australian referee Angus Gardner, at Ellis Park as the fourth official and set to take the whistle in the third test, looked apoplectic when Etzebeth was taking time out of the game, and it could have impacted the on-field referee too. It shouldn’t happen, but just maybe it did happen in the way of getting the ref to think, “All these scrums are not a good look for the game and this is now taking time out of the game”.
The scrum penalty that went against the Boks was a big turning point in the game. And it may, just maybe, have been one of the several instances in the clash that the Boks conspired against themselves.
RENNIE MAY HAVE WON THE OFF-FIELD WAR
The mention of that scrum penalty cues something that I have deliberately left until later in the column because, like a lot of South Africans, I have an aversion to whingeing. The All Blacks were brilliantly clinical at Ellis Park, and heroically resilient, and deserve all the accolades that come their way in the buildup to the next blockbuster at DHL Stadium on Saturday.
But I did think that All Black coach Dave Rennie won his little off-field war to influence the referees. I won’t go into it in detail, but during the game I got the impression that there were many cynical transgressions from the All Blacks that went unpunished and, actually, some big misses from referee Matt Carley.
In the 19th minute, I did note what looked like one of those wrapped shoulder charges when the All Blacks were cleaning out an attacking ruck, but Victor Matfield and Nick Mallett, hosted by Owen Nkumane in Sunday night’s Final Whistle on Supersport television, did a far more forensic study on the refereeing and, in so doing, confirmed my impression.
Just watch it to see what I mean. The off-field battle to get the referee to see the right pictures and to influence them to think a certain way of playing does justice to the sport is, unfortunately, just part of rugby (although I maintain my line that they have no right to dictate to the world how to play). So if Rennie can get away with it, good luck to him.
Many will reference Rassie’s video between the first and second test of the 2021 British and Irish Lions series when this subject comes up, but the best example of Rassie winning an off-field war was probably during the 2019 World Cup.
It will be recalled that there was a lot of Bok unhappiness with referee Jerome Garces, particularly with the way he reffed the scrums, in the World Cup opening game against the All Blacks in Yokohama. And Rassie and his management, apart from following the processes behind the scenes, were quite public about it.
As it turned out, Garces was chosen to ref the final, where England and not New Zealand ended up being the opponents, and he blew the relevant aspects of the game the Boks had complained about exactly as they wanted him to. As unpopular as Rassie’s video was, it also played a role in turning the 2021 Lions series his team’s way. Well done to him, because he was 100 percent correct with most of the things he highlighted.
World Rugby was right to be aggrieved for the way the referee Nick Berry copped it. Maybe they should have copped it themselves, for it was their protocols that led to the situation that prompted Rassie’s action. And the protocols around communication with referees are definitely at fault now too.
But one of the reasons Rennie may have won that initial off-field war is that the South African media don’t hunt as a pack, push their team’s line in unison, like some overseas media contingents, including the Kiwis, do. Remember that time the Boks arrived in New Zealand to be greeted by a front page newspaper photograph of them under the headline “Is this team a joke?” Or, for that matter, the fun made of Warren Gatland in the New Zealand media when he was there with the British and Irish Lions in 2017.
You don’t get that kind of orchestrated assault on visiting teams in the SA sports media, and if you wonder what I am referring to, think of what cricket teams that visit Australia get assaulted with from the Aussie media when they tour Down Under. The great Aussie skipper Steve Waugh used to be quite open about the drive to mentally disintegrate visiting teams.
Last week, when Rassie and his law adviser Jaco Peyper were trying to get their points across about the New Zealand off-field war aimed at influencing the officials, the subject kept being diverted by journos who asked questions about comparatively irrelevant issues. Some platforms ran with Rassie’s attitude to the SA people who support the All Blacks as their lead rather than what was most clearly the big issue of the day. Really?
GREAT THAT THE HAKA WAS RESPECTED
One message that Rassie clearly did get across last week was his desire for South African fans to respect the All Blacks when they perform the Haka. Ellis Park has been the one venue in the past where the Haka has consistently been drowned out by the crowd singing “ole, ole, ole…”
We are not Spanish and are also not one of the countries where Spanish is the main language; it doesn’t even feature in our official 11, so the mind boggles as to why we’ve adopted that one. But regardless, it was great to be at Ellis Park and for once not to be embarrassed by that lack of understanding for what the Haka really is and what it represents.
TWO PLANES. REALLY?
Isn’t the pre-match feature of games at Ellis Park and other venues being preceded by a flyover by jetliners getting a bit tired now?
It was great as a one-off before the 1995 World Cup final, and has entered into SA rugby folklore as a result.
This past Saturday, we had not one, but at least two airliners flying low over the stadium. Fairly close together, like they were fighter jets. I am not an expert in these things, but it just feels a bit unnecessarily dangerous to me. No wonder I found the pre-match a bit intimidating.