THE HUFF AND PUFF WILL AMOUNT TO MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Those who remember back to the days when Jonah Lomu was a regular visitor to this country will recall the fuss that appeared to accompany his arrival. He was always regarded as the pre-eminent of the All Blacks, the giant wing was the man the Springboks had to contain and “sort out”.
And there was a perception that they did. Lomu was a prodigious try scorer in international rugby. But he never scored a single try against the Boks. Indeed, when wing Cedric Heymans scored an intercept try for Namibia when they were mashed by South Africa in a World Cup warmup game at Newlands in 2007, I drew some laughter when I put out the line that at least he would be able to tell his grandchildren that he scored more tries against the Boks than Jonah Lomu did.
Lomu played in 13 games for the All Blacks against their old foe and never scored in one of them. Let’s not deny that this is an amazing statistic. It’s akin to Erling Haarland going 13 games without scoring. If that happened, the Norway and Manchester City striker would go into a fit of depression and his mug would be all over the UK newspapers for all the wrong reasons.
But when Lomu came to South Africa, his team won more games than they lost, and some players around him, in particular the New Zealand fullback Christian Cullen, thrived. He was the diametric opposite of Lomu in that at the end of his career he could claim the Boks as the team he had scored the most tries against (10 against the eight he scored against Australia).
That’s as phenomenal a record as Lomu not scoring.
Would he have scored as many tries against the Boks had the Boks not been so fixated on keeping Lomu out? It’s a good question. And the answer is probably in the negative. The apparent win when it came to defending against Lomu has to be balanced out by the space created around by the fixation of the South African defence.
ALL THE ATTENTION
Which cues the huff and puff and over the top fixation with Henry Pollock as the Boks head into their first test match of the year against England at Ellis Park on Saturday. The supremely talented young Northampton Saints loose-forward is only playing off the bench, but he’s attracting all the attention, so much so that you’d think he was the England captain. England has in fact been referenced in at least one local headline as “Pollock’s boys”.
England may welcome that, it takes the pressure off the rest of the team, and Pollock gives the impression he can handle it. No, he thrives on it, he draws his energy from it. But all the huff and puff, and the predictions that the Boks will sort him out and, in the words of one UK story I have read, “prepare a special reception for him when he comes off the bench”, is going to lead to anti-climax, rendering all the foregoing as what can be summed up by the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays, “Much Ado About Nothing”.
Pollock has been a sideshow at press conferences this week, someone the media have brought up. But if the Boks have been banging their heads against the walls in their hotel rooms this week muttering the words “Take that Henry Pollock” then they would have lost the plot. And they rarely, if ever, lose the plot under the coaching of Rassie Erasmus.
Rugby has moved on from the days you “could sort” out a player in some dark place where it wouldn’t be seen. There are cameras pointing everywhere on the field. More than that, there are over-officious TMOS sitting in boxes watching big games eager to have their imprint placed on it. Bakkies Botha wouldn’t get away in 2026 with what he might have got away with in 2009.
Erasmus has said his team will have their work cut out containing Pollock. But they won’t be training all their attention on a reserve player and if they did they’d be making the same mistake their predecessors did against Lomu.
MENTION THAT SURNAME AND I THINK OF GRAEME
I have struggled to make out what has been worse - the South African social preoccupation with Pollock, or the way that the UK media have let that become centre-stage in the pre-match narrative. I deliberately avoided putting Pollock’s name in the headline. When I think of the name Pollock, it conjures up memories of South Africa’s cricketer of the previous century, Graeme, who quite rightly was known as the Maestro. Or his nephew, Shaun, who, if it wasn’t for the ridiculously prolific statistics across all aspects of the sport of one Jacques Kallis, would have been remembered as the premier Proteas allrounder of his era. He was more than just a bowler.
I did do quite an extensive piece on Henry Pollock earlier in the week, but that was requested. And I focused on the phenomenon of the hype around the player. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Pollock is a good thing for rugby. It is a sport that needs personalities. The late James Small got into his fair share of controversies during his career, but he is remembered as the first rock star of South African rugby and someone who brought colour to the sport.
And Pollock isn’t himself just only huff and puff either, and given how good he’s been in the Gallagher Premiership and as an impact player for England it surprises me isn’t starting at No 8 for England ahead of Ben Earl. My own line on Pollock was set when he starred as a 19-year-old for Northampton against the Bulls in 2019. He played a big role in his team’s epic win and neither Loftus nor the Bulls intimidated him. I don’t expect him to be embarrassed at Ellis Park, even if he’s not on the winning side. As I described him in my feature, to me he is a synthesis of Bob Skinstad, for his flamboyance and skill set, and a player South African teams often struggled against, the Zambia-born Wallaby David Pocock.
SA CONFIDENCE WILL PLAY INTO BORTHWICK’S HANDS
“That was a good game to miss.”
Those words came from Springbok tighthead prop Keith Andrews to his cousin Mark at a Loftus cocktail party in 1994 after the national team had been mauled by England in what was the first post-isolation clash between the two nations on South African soil.
Keith was in the Bok team that played the first post-isolation game between the sides at Twickenham 18 months earlier, when England recovered from a poor first half to drum out a 33-16 victory in what was to be the South African skipper Naas Botha’s last appearance for his country, but he had missed out on selection for the Loftus game. Mark was yet to play for the Boks.
Both had taken part in a curtain-raiser featuring an SA Invitation team against what was still then Northern Transvaal and had watched Will Carling’s England issue another rugby lesson, this time winning 32-15 with flyhalf Rob Andrew contributing 27 points, from the stands. Keith was right, it was a good game for him to miss.
But the result was a good one for his cousin, who on the basis of the Bok failure that day was selected for his first test in the Bok second row for the return game in Cape Town a week later. It was a tough time to make a debut, as the South African public never enjoys seeing their team get beaten by England, and the response from the media (there was no social media in those days) was both harsh and vehement.
When Andrews walked into his hotel room in Cape Town ahead of his debut, there were newspaper articles plastered over the walls. One of them was the headline from the Cape Times that morning: “Is this team a joke?” Referring to coach Ian McIntosh’s changes to the team, with Natalian Andrews, who’d then only experienced one season of first class rugby, being one of the most talked about and mistrusted newcomers.
That was McIntosh’s way of motivating his players. In fact Mac often chided me when I wrote stories back in those days that were too disparaging of the opposition. If he was still with us and in Rassie’s position this week, he wouldn’t be a happy camper. And I suspect Rassie may not be that crazy about all the Pom bashing either. He’d be eager to distance himself from it.
STUNG INTO ACTION
Anyway, Mac’s ploy back in 1994 worked. Stung into action, the Boks turned in the kind of ferocious rucking performance that if it happened today would lead to the entire pack being yellow or red carded and won 27-9, the winning margin one point more than the England winning margin had been in Pretoria.
This bit of history is brought up because while times may have changed and the preparation of teams is more professional and scientific these days, there’s still an element of the old school motivation just to get the players on edge and chomping at the bit to make a point. In that regard, England coach Steve Borthwick is the man who this week should be thanking South Africans, in this instance more social media than mainstream although there have been some pearlers in the mainstream media too, for helping him to do his job.
Headlines such as “Pom Bashing - Pollock’s boys set for Bok bruising” were tweeted by English scribes as the visitors arrived in the country, and you can be sure that they found their way into Borthwick’s hands. South African rugby is riding the crest of a wave at the moment but it is fortunate for all of us that the Boks are unlikely to share in the complacency.
For England, who have been building up to this game for a long time and see it as the true measure of any progress they may have made, have been presented with plenty of fuel to drive a passionate and determined performance.
THERE IS MORE TO RASSIE’S METHOD THAN WE SAW ON CHASING THE SUN
Of course players are professional now - that aforementioned 1994 game was still in the amateur era - and you shouldn’t lack motivation once you put on your national jersey. But if there is anyone who doubts that the old school approach still plays a part in motivation, take another look at the two docuseries that were made on the successive Bok World Cup triumphs in 2019 and 2023 - Chasing the Sun.
A mate who is in the coaching game phoned me when the first series was aired and expressed his incredulity - “You tell me Rassie is such a technical expert but watching this series he comes across as so basic, he just motivates the players by swearing at them and talking down the opposition”.
I had to assure my friend that there was no way on earth that Rassie, in his role as executive director of the series, was going to allow his IP to be broadcast for all the world to see. Coaches are way more secretive and protective of their IP than that, so what we got to see was the human stuff - such as Rassie ratting out his players in the second series when he felt they’d become too big for their boots.
But going into the intricacies of lineout codes? Rassie is too clever for that. And no coach in the world would go there in such a public way. What we did see though showed us how nationalistic the South African approach is, something picked up on and used by the former All Black coach Graham Henry after he visited the Bok changeroom following the 3-0 whitewash inflicted on his side by John Smit’s men in the 2009 Tri-Nations.
Peter de Villiers was the Bok coach at that time and in his book he wrote that there were elements of the Bok approach that would have to change with time, among them the preoccupation with the Boer War that was the rallying call of some coaches before matches against England. With the changed demographic of the national team, and the Boer War having ended 125 years ago whereas it was less than a century ago in 1992, that makes sense.
However, England are still known as the colonisers and that remains a big drive for the Boks, and indeed probably all South African sports teams, when they play against that nation. There’s an inbred perception of arrogance and superiority that makes a win over England even more of a non-negotiable than it is when the old foe, the All Blacks, are the opponents.
In fact the key difference may be in how I couched that - the All Blacks are a team that everyone wants the Boks to beat, England are a team that no-one wants to lose to.
NO BUS THIS TIME
So I was toying with the idea of travelling to Johannesburg for the England game by bus. For those who haven’t noticed, this column was born out of a hankering to be a travel writer, to rename myself Gavin Bryson, and the bus does offer more than a flight does. Being woken up at the Kimberley bus station at 3am, or better still the Ultra-City at Three Sisters at that time when you are travelling in the opposite direction, has a romanticism to it that being dropped off by an Uber at Cape Town international Airport at 8am doesn’t have.
You also have time to think about things as well as see things when you are on the bus. Last year, en route to watching a 20-minute performance for the ages by the Boks followed by a collapse of epic proportions in the Ellis Park match against the Wallabies, we passed through Welkom and it inspired memories of the days when Northern Free State were the Purple People Eaters. And kept Natal (Sharks) out of the A Section of the Currie Cup.
You don’t expect that from a flight. I will be happiest if I sleep the whole way. But it wasn’t always thus when it comes to flying. There was a time when pilots would sometimes tell you a bit about the areas you flew over.
In particular I remember a flight to Joburg from Cape Town at the start of my first ever trip to Argentina. It was on one of those old classic SAA 737s, the ones that were named after South African rivers, and the pilot was both quite elderly and eccentric. I know the former because he came out of the cabin at some stage to walk among the passengers. I know he probably had a co-pilot steering us, but that always makes me uncomfortable.
Actually, while rugby writers, quite clearly, and also at a push rugby coaches, can be allowed to be eccentric, I’m not crazy about that description being ascribed to a pilot, full stop. It’s not quite as bad as if he came onto the plane being led by a white labrador, but it still makes me uncomfortable.
Anyway the flight in question, on that Sunday morning in what in a few months' time will be 30 years ago, was through clear skies. You could see…well, you could see as far as the eye can see. And there was a very clear view of the Vaal River, which precipitated a very long but interesting lecture, and slight banking of the plane to show us, about the area where General Koos de la Rey crossed that river during the guerilla phase of the Boer War in June 1901.
You wouldn’t get that today and I doubt you’d get another thing I remember experiencing at some point, which was the plane banking for a view of the Big Hole in Kimberley on the flight from Joburg to Cape Town. I don’t know if the routing takes us over Kimberley these days, because pilots, until they are about to start the descent, or want to tell us about turbulence, generally stay quiet.
Which is probably best, for the best flight is the one that is uneventful. Unlike the day the Boks played France in the 1995 World Cup semifinal in Durban. The storms forced the many planes on the route between Joburg and Durban to circle for ages over Harrismith, and a colleague told me about his very turbulent flight, with the pilot pronouncing as they landed “Welcome safely in Durban, we were twice struck by lightning - what an experience!”
It’s experiences like that that make me want to take the bus…