Tribute to Ian McIntosh: The unsung hero of SA rugby

Ian McIntosh, a larger than life character who died on Wednesday at the age of 84, should be remembered as more than just the architect of Natal’s rise to the formidable player they became both locally and on the world rugby stage later on as the Sharks.

Yes, he was the man who took the old Banana Boys from their former Cinderella status as they won the Currie Cup for the first time in an epic and memorable 1990 final in Pretoria played just three seasons after they’d been promoted by administrative decree to the top table after languishing for several seasons in the B Section.

But he also did the same for South African rugby as a whole. While McIntosh’s style, known as direct rugby, was unpopular at the time that he took over from Professor John Williams as Springbok coach, that was because it was misunderstood. The concept of a flyhalf lining in on the gainline instead of standing deeper, in the so-called pocket, was alien to the South African rugby culture, possibly a by-product of the sport here being left behind in the years of isolation.

World rugby has lost a legend.

Rest in Peace, Ian McIntosh ?? pic.twitter.com/3bzzSRcgcS
— vodacomrugby (@VodacomRugga) April 5, 2023

DIRECT RUGBY

Although his direct rugby was understood by the Natal players who had thrived on it, with the 1990 Currie Cup title being followed by a second one two years later, it took a while for his teachings to get through to the players from the other provinces when he became Springbok coach in 1993.

He was lauded when the Boks, with two Natal players who knew his style in the key scrumhalf and flyhalf positions in the form of Robert du Preez and Joel Stransky, won the first test of the 1993 series away against the then world champion Wallabies. But when fate conspired against the Boks in the next test when the late James Small was sent off by English referee Ed Morrison for back-chat, the mood swung against Mac.

His team was accused of playing “stock-car rugby” and “crash and bash”, and to be fair, with the Bok players not fully understanding their roles, that is what it did look like. However, late in the following year’s tour of New Zealand, Hennie le Roux, who had taken over the flyhalf role, admitted that he had finally got to understand what McIntosh was driving at.

Unfortunately though, as Brendan Venter said in a book I wrote about the post-isolation Springbok coaches, The Poisoned Chalice, it was by then too late. The Boks had lost the three match series 2-0, with two tight losses being followed by a draw at Eden Park.

SA’s LACK OF PERSPECTIVE COST MAC THE BOK JOB

Given what was to come in the years that followed, with the All Blacks pretty much dominating their old foe on New Zealand soil, the narrowness of the series loss was a step forward for the Boks under McIntosh. Particularly if you consider that the South Africans had only been readmitted to the international game less than two years earlier.

But at the time there was an arrogance in the South African rugby culture that was a throw back to the pre-isolation dominance, and defeat, even in New Zealand, which was known in pre-isolation as “the graveyard of Springbok coaches”, was unacceptable. In retrospect, looking back nearly 30 years later, there was a complete lack of perspective, and that was what cost Mac the top coaching job in South African rugby.

So McIntosh made way for the late Kitch Christie, who instilled discipline in the Bok team and guided them to success in the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Many of the players who played under both McIntosh and Christie though, and that includes the aforementioned Venter, have agreed subsequently that Christie took on the Mac playing template.

Would the Boks have won in 1995 had McIntosh not modernised their game? We will never know, but there are many who believe that Mac was an unsung hero of that first World Cup triumph. And McIntosh himself told me after watching Christie’s team thrash the powerful Welsh club Swansea (they were formidable in those days) on Christie’s first tour in November 1994 that it was the moment he had finally seen his game plan perfected.

ACHIEVED SUCCESS AT THE SHARKS

McIntosh went back to the Sharks after that and proved his credentials as a top coach by guiding them to another two Currie Cup finals, while he was also in charge when they lost to Auckland in the inaugural Super 12 final in 1996. His final game in charge of the Sharks was the 1999 Currie Cup final, where an under-strength Sharks team missing key players to the Boks who were preparing for that year’s World Cup went down to the Golden Lions.

The Sharks won four Currie Cups in that decade though, which earned them the reputation of being “The team of the 90s”. All of those wins were with McIntosh as coach. It all started in the first year of that decade, with Natal’s massive win over Western Province on test Unions Day at Kings Park in April 1990 representing a turning point for a union that was until then competitive but had never seriously challenged for a major title.

There were of course some star players who came to Durban from outside, and in maybe in that sense Natal and McIntosh were ahead of their time in other ways too, but the platform of success was created when McIntosh, with the gutsy Henry Coxwell as his guinea pig, revolutionised the Natal playing style towards the end of their first year back in the Currie Cup A Section in 1987.

Up until a certain point Natal were not only struggling to win, but struggling to score tries, and veteran Cliffie Brown was scoring all their points with his boot. However, with Coxwell engaging opposition defenders and thus bringing his forwards into the game and creating a mismatch in numbers when Natal had the ball, McIntosh’s direct rugby approach started to reap immediate dividends and there was a steady improvement until that 1990 Currie Cup triumph. Tony Watson scoring the try that won the Loftus final and sent the province of Natal into a celebration that lasted several weeks.

With the utmost sadness, The Sharks and KwaZulu-Natal Rugby Union join the KZN and the greater South African rugby community in mourning the passing of legendary coach, Mr Ian MacIntosh. pic.twitter.com/ANLTNUID0c
— The Sharks (@SharksRugby) April 5, 2023

'YOU’RE EITHER FOR US OR AGAINST US'

The following year, 1991, was my own debut as a rugby writer at The Natal Mercury. I can recall how nervous I was the first time I had to phone him - the previous season I’d been a Natal fan - but he quickly put me at ease once the interview was over: “Master, are you sure you are a journalist? Your questions are too intelligent for a journalist.”

But he wasn’t always happy with what I wrote. He didn’t understand the need for journalistic impartiality, and after a critical story he phoned me to tell me that “You are either for us or you are against us, there is no in between”.

That 1991 Natal campaign was a season where, aside from two good wins over Northern Transvaal, thus proving that the result in the final was no fluke, the Natalians struggled for consistency. A year after winning the Currie Cup, they ended second last in the A Section.

There were many brickbats sent McIntosh’s way that year and he had many critics, but I was present as a spectator at the Natal practice on the afternoon building up to the Currie Cup clash with Northern Transvaal (the Bulls) at Loftus where he called in the former New South Wales and future Wallaby and Brumbies coach, Rod MacQueen, to put a fresh angle through to the players.

The Natal team had been thrashed 62-6 by the Bulls in the Lion Cup final a few weeks earlier, and the mood was turning against Mac. MacQueen did introduce a few innovations, but it was really a case of McIntosh recognising the need for the players to just hear the same things from a different voice. That was Mac. His ego wasn’t too big, he was never completely set on the “My way is right” approach and he was prepared to listen. For instance McIntosh let the powerful former Wallaby hooker Tom Lawton, who was one of the most influential players in the 1990 triumph, pretty much take over as scrum coach.

The upshot of that MacQueen visit was that Natal turned around the disaster of the Lion Cup final and went to Pretoria and won in a game that I remember as being the Natal debuts of future Springbok captain Gary Teichmann and his Durban University teammate, the future Protea cricketer Errol Stewart.

HE COULD BE PARANOID

He also had his foibles, and he could be decidedly paranoid. That was an era where reporters went to practices, well at least I did, and recall him telling me I was too close to the scrumming practice and he was worried I might “give away our secrets to Transvaal”. On that occasion he was definitely overestimating my understanding of the darker arts.

On another occasion, at a practice at the stadium, Mac came charging across the field when he spotted me sitting in a seat quite high up on the grandstand. Once he had assessed it was me and not a spy sent in by that weekend’s opposition he was happy, but it did show how paranoid he could be.

But perhaps the best example of that paranoia comes from John Allan, who played for Natal and was also a Bok under McIntosh. According to Allan, the Boks were training at a naval base in Sydney in the buildup to one of the test matches of the 1993 series when he and Joel Stransky noted how many seagulls there were fluttering about.

Allan called McIntosh over and told him he’d heard that the Wallabies had placed spy cameras on the feet of some of the seagulls. McIntosh didn’t believe him at first but then later in the training session he was roaring at one of the naval officers present, demanding that he shoot the poor birds out of the sky.

THE FACE OF RUGBY

There were few more humorous men in the game - “The Face of Rugby” was a very apt title for his biography, written by John Bishop - and years after he’d stopped coaching Mac was in demand as a public speaker and MC, where there were never any holy cows and his humour was never censored.

He was a passionate rugby man and former Bok prop Keith Andrews, who was sitting near the coach on the bench that day, tells the story of McIntosh kissing him in his exuberance when the final whistle blew on a Bok victory in Argentina.

Referees were the bane of his existence, and that was where the Face of Rugby came from. Mac wore his heart on his sleeve and television cameras loved focusing on his facial expressions when things happened on the field that he disagreed with.

After he had stopped coaching but was serving as a Bok selector, a role he fulfilled for various Bok coaches over many years, he was walking through the Kings Park carpark one day before heading into the stadium when he bumped into the Australian referee Peter Marshall, who had made some tough calls against Mac during his time as Sharks coach.

McIntosh, obviously with a big touch of humour, harangued Marshall from a dizzy height and tried to drag the Aussie to where his own car was parked to make a point: “Master, you see what you did to me. I am driving an old Toyota, if it wasn’t for guys like you I’d be driving a Merc”. Or something to that effect.

POSSIBLY THE WORLD’S FIRST PRO COACH

That was Mac. In my early days of rugby writing in Durban he was very much Mister Rugby in the province, and he will be forever remembered for the work he did in turning rugby in KwaZulu/Natal into a force to be reckoned with. But he will also be remembered for so much more, and after starting his coaching career with Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), he was also arguably the world’s first professional coach.

When he first came to Durban he filled a fulltime role as the Natal Rugby Union coaching director/co-ordinator, but when he coached Natal his payslip at one stage was issued through a local sports shop, rather than the NRU, so that he couldn’t be found guilty of contravening rugby’s at that point still strict rules on amateurism.

McIntosh spent the early part of his working life as a teacher, but he was very much devoted to rugby after that. The last time I saw Mac was when I popped into the Kings Park suite where the Natal team of 1990, after a week of celebrations to commemorate that historic Loftus triumph, were watching last September’s Rugby Championship clash between the Boks and Argentina.

It was clear to me that he had aged since our previous meeting or his health wasn't 100 per cent, but he still spoke passionately about what he perceived as modern rugby’s problems, and later that night Dick Muir suggested to me I give Mac a call because he had a lot of things to say that perhaps needed to go on record. I didn’t take Dick’s advice and now regret it.