SUCH A GREAT VENUE FOR A WORLD CUP FINAL
“From memory your CEO said at some point that a Rugby World Cup will never be played again in South Africa. That seems very defeatist to me. This would be a great venue for a RWC final.”
The venue the New Zealand media man was referring to was the FNB Stadium, known to many of us as Soccer City, and of course the venue of the FIFA World Cup final in 2010. But, he hastened to add, Ellis Park was also an iconic venue, and a final there, from a rugby perspective, would be apt. After all, it was the platform for so much, such as the movie Invictus, from 1995.
Of course this conversation happened in the buildup to last week’s third test of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series. And it was understandable that some of the visiting media were filled with such enthusiasm. Forget about the crowd in for the game itself, the fan park adjacent to the stadium also had a special atmosphere in the buildup.
South Africa, like New Zealand, is a rugby country. I was at the 1995 World Cup in this country, covering it for Independent Newspapers. It was a busy time but also a very enjoyable time. It was a tournament that was well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by all those who flew in from around the world.
The visitors would have been as surprised as us South Africans if we were told then that there wouldn’t be another World Cup in the country. With the stadiums we have, and the fans we have, it is the perfect venue for a World Cup. I was in New Zealand when that country hosted what will probably be their last World Cup too, and that was also a special tournament, although I do understand that the venues there may be a bit small. They are not too small here.
So yes, and this might sound naive to the people who understand economics, my Kiwi friend was right - it does seem a bit defeatist to give up on playing another World Cup here. If we could host a FIFA World Cup as recently as 2010, then surely it’s not beyond the ambition of the country to host another rugby one, and we were in the running to host in 2023. Just three years ago.
As my Kiwi friend said, because money is what makes the world go around, the World Cup after the 2031 RWC in the USA will probably be in Saudi Arabia. Which kind of cues the late Doc Danie Craven, who was from an era when rugby administrators were driven by their love of the game and not by the money that could be pocketed.
He said rugby going professional wouldn’t be good for the game, it would become the root of evil. If he was alive today he might feel his view has been vindicated.
PLAYING THE DECIDER IN AMERICA IS AN ANTI-CLIMAX
I have several South African friends who will be attending Saturday’s fourth and final test in Baltimore, and I don’t begrudge them the chance to see the Springboks play. By all accounts, there will be a lot of South African expats there, but along a similar theme to my previous point, how does it make any kind of sense to be playing the trophy lift game to a series that was played in South Africa, and enjoyed so much by South Africans, in the USA?
Almost everybody I have spoken to this week, be it in private conversation or on podcasts, has mentioned a sense of anti-climax. That this game is harder to build up to than the other three. The Kiwi journos, even though their team now has a chance to at least get a share of the inaugural RGR trophy, were in agreement last week that the FNB game was the real decider.
And the UK rugby media appears to agree too. The report by the Times’ Charlie Morgan even had the words “real decider” in the headline. And since then there’s been almost nothing in the UK media on the series. To them the series is over, and Baltimore is anti-climax.
Personally, and I have had a running argument with my colleague Brenden Nel on this, I think Saturday’s game remains massive. The RGR trophy is going to become an important thing for the two competing nations to possess, just like the Ashes urn is for England and Australia in cricket.
This new series to be played every four years between the traditional powerhouses of world rugby is very much rugby’s version of the Ashes. So I believe Saturday’s game does matter, and Rassie Erasmus obviously thinks so too for he’s selected the team that has given the Boks the series lead.
But imagine if a decision was taken to have one of the Ashes test matches played in another country. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it - the idea was floated earlier this year that the next time England goes to Australia for the Ashes one of the games gets played in India.
Again, the economic imperative would have driven that, just like it is not inherent love of the game but economic imperative that has condemned this last RGR game to be played in the USA, for India is the economic powerhouse of cricket.
Fortunately though the idea never passed muster because there was an outcry, and rightly so. There should have been when the RGR plans were unveiled. Yes, I know it is the money game, I know the two rugby administrations will make more money out of this one game than two games played in South Africa. But why play this game as part of the series?
It could have been an exhibition game played at another time, perhaps when both teams were en route to Europe for the closing rounds of the Nations Championship, or the week after that tournament concluded. I know that would be outside of the international window, but then the New Zealand season would officially be over then and since when has SA Rugby cared about the international window when it comes to scheduling Bok tests?
The bottom line really is that the trophy lift to the inaugural RGR series should have been on South African soil in front of a South African crowd, and FNB Stadium last Saturday, in front of more than 86 000 fans, would have been the perfect climax. Instead the trophy lift will be happening in the early hours of the morning when many South Africans will be asleep.
BOKS HAVE BEEN THE SUPERIOR TEAM
Being back home, with my wife overseas and just a cat - well, not just a cat, THE Cat - for company, did give me a chance to watch the last two games played in the RGR series again. And it confirmed the impression I had at the time that the Boks were far more comfortable winners of the second and third tests than the end scorelines might have suggested.
Even in this last game at the FNB Stadium, when South Africans would have had their hearts in their mouths when the All Black attack had the Bok defence scrambling in the first half, the Bok superiority in the power game and the slow poison of their physicality should really have given a degree of comfort.
Once the Bok scrum started making its statement, there should have been a degree of inevitability about the end result, with the Boks this time closing out the game as they tend to these days - by being completely physically dominant in the final quarter.
The first game in Joburg was one the Boks butchered, to put it pure and simply. Given their physical superiority there, they should have won by at least 15 points, and not lose by 17, but were done in by their lack of cohesion after not playing together since the England game at the same Ellis Park venue on 4 July.
So while there is a lot of talk about the series being nip and tuck, and the All Blacks should be encouraged by how they’ve managed to expose the Boks with their attacking game, the reality is that it could so easily have been 3-0 now. And if it had been, I am not sure that would have been a false impression of the relative strengths of the two sides.
CENTRAL SOUTH AFRICA GETTING BEHIND THEIR TEAM
So for those who read my previous column, my journey from Johannesburg back to Cape Town, which was broken by spending Sunday night at the Tzamenkomst Lodge outside Colesberg, resumed on Monday morning with OFM staying on my radio dial and no switch to Algoa as intended.
And not changing stations turned out to be a good thing because it taught me something I didn’t know about how seriously they still take the Currie Cup in places like Bloemfontein and Kimberley. Unlike would have been the case for most radio stations around the country, there was hardly any mention outside of sports bulletins of the Boks’ momentous win over the All Blacks 36 hours earlier.
All the banter was about the agonising defeat suffered by the Cheetahs in their Currie Cup semifinal against the Pumas the evening before, and let me tell you I have never seen anything as stupid as the Cheetahs opting not to kick for posts to level the scores when the chance was there with a few minutes to go. For goodness sake, the three pointer would have levelled the scores, and as it was a semifinal, a draw at the end would have taken the game to extra time.
Not so stupid clearly were the Griquas, who thrashed the Lions in Kimberley in the earlier game and set themselves up for a possible second successive Currie Cup title, with last year’s final against the Lions having been won in thrilling fashion with a last gasp George Whitehead kick. They will host the Pumas in what is a repeat of the 2022 final at the same venue that was won by the Pumas.
The radio jocks on OFM were clearly disappointed the Cheetahs lost but exhorted their listeners to get fully behind Griquas “because we want to keep the Currie Cup in central South Africa”. And fair play to them, for it is good that the old trophy, which really out of respect to the great players of the past who competed for it and won it, should long ago have been put in a museum, is taken seriously by someone.
It shouldn’t be called the Currie Cup for the above reason, but the domestic competition is a good vehicle for developing depth, and also keeping rugby alive in the country areas. It is actually pleasing from that viewpoint that the final will not include a second or third string team from the URC clubs, and is in effect a repeat of the SA Cup final.
Can those clubs continue their commitment to the Currie Cup without it impacting negatively on their finances? It is a good question that needs to be asked. The under-23 competition played in season, rather than this competition being played out of season, makes far more sense from the Big Four perspective.
GRIQUAS STAKING A CLAIM TO AN EPCR SPOT
So the question is going to be asked sooner or later, and it will become almost inevitable if Griquas, as I fancy Piet Berg’s well coached team will, wins a successive Currie Cup title on Saturday - how do we justify the Cheetahs being the fifth South African participant in the EPCR competitions, meaning for them the Champions Cup, ahead of their neighbours?
When the Cheetahs were Currie Cup champions that made sense, but that hasn’t happened for a few years now. I would suggest that Central South Africa, which OFM seems to regard as a unified region, enter a combined team in the Champions Cup. It would certainly mount a stronger challenge than the Cheetahs on their own.
When I suggested that to someone I was reminded of how disastrous the Cats concept, meaning an amalgamation of the Lions and Cheetahs, was in the old Super Rugby era. But Kimberley and Bloemfontein are much closer together than Joburg and Bloemfontein are.
NO PILLS FOR STUPIDITY
So I was delighted to be able to proclaim the strengths of my old X-trail, which has now done more than 375 000 kilometres, in Monday’s column. It did go like a bomb from Joburg to Colesberg, although I don’t really understand that expression as if it went like a bomb I would find the pieces of the car strewn over a kilometre or so radius, and in very little pieces.
It went like a bomb, because I don’t have any other expression to use, early on Monday too. Until I got to about five kilometres from Richmond. That was when it started doing a kind of farting thing and started to lose power. By the time I got about 300 metres from Richmond I encountered a traffic cop who wanted to do a routine inspection. And as he was doing that, and asking why the car license was on the dashboard and not on the windscreen (I didn’t know the answer as my daughter was driving the car before me), the engine cut out completely.
For someone who doesn’t have the fatalistic approach that I have to these things - I actually fancied a few days in Richmond if it was a mechanical issue that needed fixing - that would have been major panic stations. But I figured, since I had driven all the way from Joburg, with a 20 kilometre detour on a very muddy road to Tzamenkomst River Lodge, on one tank of petrol, it might just be me who was at fault. As the policeman pointed out, my petrol gauge said I had a quarter tank. But it is a very old car, so why did I trust it?
On reflection it should not have been a surprise I ran out of petrol, which was confirmed when I made the 600 metre round trip on foot to pick up a jug of the stuff, because I should have been aware that my tank wasn’t equipped to take me 800 kilometres. My Nissan Navara is, but I wasn’t in my Navara. As I have said before at the expense of others, there are no pills for stupidity.