When All Black coach Dave Rennie was asked if the forthcoming Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Series will be tougher than the Rugby World Cup, he didn’t hesitate. Of course it is.
In a World Cup you don’t get to face the reigning champions on four consecutive Saturdays. In a World Cup, if you are the Springboks, you don’t get to face the most recent beaten finalists on four consecutive Saturdays.
The last World Cup, for those teams on the wrong side of the draw, was hard. The Boks had to beat pre-tournament favourites France and then England to get to the final. New Zealand had to win a quarterfinal against the World Rugby No 1 team at the time, Ireland.
And then the South Africans and New Zealanders clashed in the final. So three consecutive weekends, but although England did push the Boks close in their semifinal, the middle one saw easier games played.
There’s going to be no let up this time, and the two nations who play each other consecutively over the best part of a month just happen to be the No 1 and No 2 ranked teams in the world right now.
THESE CLASHES USED TO BE FOR UNOFFICIAL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
Yet it was almost always thus when these two great rivals clashed in a series. Indeed, before the World Cup era started in 1987, the clashes between the two southern hemisphere giants were invariably seen as the unofficial world championship, with the winner being proclaimed as the best team in the world.
There were very few exceptions to that rule. Wales challenged the status of the Bok v All Black rivalry in the 1970s, the one decade where both nations were defeated in series against the British Lions. And France were very good for a time in the 1950s, although even then the Boks were viewed as the world’s best before they were toppled by the All Blacks in the rancorous and seismic 1956 series.
Indeed, it’s mostly been thus in the World Cup professional era too, with South Africa claiming four World Cup titles in eight attempts and New Zealand three in 10. England won it in 2003, and Australia in 1991 and 1999.
1996 CONFORMED TO TYPE OF BEST PITTED AGAINST BEST
When these two great rugby nations last met in a series, 1996, the stand-off conformed to type - the Boks were the reigning World Cup champions at the time, but the All Blacks were recognised as the best team in the world and proved it by winning that series 2-1.
Sean Fitzpatrick was able to cancel out the disappointment he endured for losing the 1995 World Cup final, after a tournament where New Zealand were easily the best team until that deciding match, by becoming the first All Black skipper to win a series in South Africa.
That came two years after the Boks had suffered a 2-0 series loss in New Zealand, with the third test being drawn. It was a far closer series than the fuss made about the coach Ian McIntosh, and his subsequent axing, actually warranted.
The Boks had their own indiscipline to blame for the first test defeat in Dunedin, and were within a few points of winning the second in Wellington, a match forever remembered for the ear biting incident that saw the Bok prop Johan le Roux sent home in disgrace.
IT WOULDN’T BE A BOK/ALL BLACK SERIES WITHOUT CONTROVERSY
Controversy has been a constant presence in South Africa/New Zealand series, and those who remember those that have been contested over the last 50 years, dating back to the 1976 series in which Morne du Plessis’ Boks edged out Andy Leslie’s All Blacks 3-1, would not have been surprised when the mood levels were raised this week by the sparring over approaches to the game and refereeing interpretations.
Again, it has always been thus, with some of the series in the last half century having ramifications that sometimes went beyond the two specific countries. Such as that 1976 series, that prompted some countries to boycott that year’s Olympic Games in Montreal.
And then five years later the world sat agog as the normally peaceful New Zealand community was ripped apart by the anti-apartheid demonstrations and field invasions.
Remember what HART stood for? It was Halt All Racist Tours. The Boks were forced to sleep in the venue changing rooms the night before the games rather than in hotels, and in the third deciding test in Auckland flour bombs were rained onto the field from a light aircraft, making it get remembered in the halls of infamy as “the Flour Bomb test”.
But it wasn’t just the protests and the cancellation of the game against Waikato in Hamilton because of a field invasion that will stand out in the memory of those of us who watched that tour on our televisions and followed it on our radios: there was, as there almost always is, plenty of controversy around the refereeing.
REFEREEING DECISIONS BRED BITTERNESS IN 1976 AND 1981
That game at Eden Park should have been remembered for some of the excellent rugby that saw Bok wing Ray Mordt score three tries, the third of which drew the scores level at 22-all as the Boks rallied magnificently from a poor opening half.
There are many who believe that had Naas Botha, the Bok flyhalf, nailed his conversion from touchline to put the Boks in the lead, the final whistle would have been blown by the Welsh referee Clive Norling. The game was already in injury time.
That would have given the Boks their second ever series win in New Zealand, to go with the one scored by Philip Nel’s team in 1937. As coincidence would have it, Nel was from what was then Natal, and so was the 1981 captain Wynand Claassen. But history was not made by the Boks as Botha, perhaps put off by the flour bomb plane flying over at that instant, missed the kick.
Norling, apparently feeling that such a momentous and controversial series deserved a winner, continued the game deeper and deeper into injury time until eventually he spotted a debatable Bok transgression. The All Black fullback Alan Hewson nailed the penalty to make New Zealand series winners.
Many decades later the Boks involved in that game remain bitter about what transpired there, and rightly so, but they would be no more bitter than the All Blacks of 1976, who were as understandably miffed by the refereeing of the Potchefstroom school master, Gert Bezuidenhout.
Years later I met the All Black prop of that era, Billy Bush, and when I mentioned Bezuidenhout’s name to him he positively bristled.
MORNE WAS LAST BOK CAPTAIN TO WIN AN ALL BLACK SERIES
There were claims by the All Blacks that they should have been awarded what would have been a match winning penalty try in the second half, and the video evidence, even to patriotic South Africans, did suggest their complaints were justified.
It made for a bitter end to the series, with the All Black management not holding back when it came to complaining through the media.
It led to what as a youngster I remember one of the more memorable sporting quotes of that time. It came from Bok captain Du Plessis, when he was asked if his team was lucky to win, “Yes, we may have been lucky, but then I have played in many games where the opposition were lucky.”
Du Plessis, who was the Bok team manager when Francois Pienaar held the World Cup aloft in Johannesburg in 1995, was in fact the last Bok captain to win an official series against the All Blacks.
CAVALIERS SERIES FELT LIKE A PROPER SERIES BUT IT WASN’T
There was a series between the Boks and the rebel New Zealand Cavaliers in 1986 which felt very much like a proper series for those of us who watched it, and also no doubt for those who played in it. There was a lot of bitterness from the defeated New Zealanders about the refereeing too, even though by then the games were being officiated by neutral referees.
But while 28 of the 30 Cavalier tourists had been selected to the All Black squad that would have toured South Africa in 1985 had that series not been cancelled a matter of weeks before it was due to start, it was not an official All Black team and an official series.
The Boks, led by Naas Botha, did win that series 3-1, and were emphatic enough in their win to suggest they would have been strong challengers for the inaugural World Cup, which was won by New Zealand in their own country a year later.
It was an era where the Bok strength was at the back, and although Mordt, the would-have-been hero of 1981, had left the rugby union code by then to play Rugby League for Wigan, the likes of Botha, Michael du Plessis, Danie Gerber, Carel du Plessis, and Johan Heunis would all have challenged strongly to be recognised as the best players in their position in the world at that time.
Of course, that was not the only unofficial series win the Boks might have been able to claim in the 50 years that have past since the final whistle sounded on South Africa’s last official series win in 1976 - most notably the Boks under the coaching of Peter de Villiers and captaincy of John Smit won three games without reply on the way to winning the Tri-Nations in 2009.
In 1998 Nick Mallett and Gary Teichmann completed a two game sweep, but that was also in the Tri-Nations, and did not count as a series on its own. Ditto two years ago, when the Boks under the coaching of Rassie Erasmus and captaincy of Siya Kolisi won their two games against New Zealand in the Rugby Championship.
This is the first official series since 1996, and the fourth official series since the last Bok win in 1976. The All Blacks have won all three of those played in the intervening years, so the Boks have a drought to break as they go into the Greatest Rivalry Series in the coming month.
SOUTH AFRICA V NEW ZEALAND SERIES RESULTS IN LAST HALF CENTURY
1976 - Played in South Africa: Springboks won 3-1
1981 - Played in New Zealand: All Blacks won 2-1
1994 - Played in New Zealand: All Blacks won 2-0 (one test was drawn)
1996 - Played in South Africa: All Blacks won 2-1
UNOFFICIAL SERIES
1986 v New Zealand Cavaliers - Springboks won 3-1
RUGBY'S GREATEST RIVALRY SCHEDULE
22 August - Springboks v All Blacks (Johannesburg)
29 August - Springboks v All Blacks (Cape Town)
5 September - Springboks v All Blacks (Soweto - FNB Stadium)
12 September - Springboks v All Blacks (Baltimore, USA)