Why the Lions series really was war minus the shooting

“Sport is war minus the shooting.” “Sport is war minus the killing”.

You choose which quote you prefer. The first is from the author George Orwell, the second from Ted Turner, the American entrepreneur businessman. Both say pretty much the same thing. And both would apply more directly to last year’s series between the Springboks and British and Irish Lions than to most historical sporting events.

The first episode will be broadcast on Sunday (M-Net, 6pm; SuperSport, 7pm).

Which is saying quite a lot for there have been many controversial, rancorous, bitterly fought and received sporting contests through the ages. But it is hard to recall one so devoid of redeeming features, and as much overshadowed by a mood of spitefulness and win at all costs, as was the case in the iconic series played on South African soil last year.

Indeed, it wouldn't be amiss to reference another part of the above Orwell quote to provide an overview of the mood that was adrift as the two teams clashed with one another over three consecutive Saturdays at Cape Town Stadium - “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play.”

Both parties, as will probably become evident when the eagerly anticipated three-part documentary on the series, Two Sides, is flighted by SuperSport over the next three Sundays, would at various stages of the war between them have pointed that quote at the other and turned it into an accusation.

BOTH THOUGHT THE OTHER STARTED IT

While the video released by South African national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus, in which he criticised the referee who officiated in the first test, still heavily overshadows all other argument for the foreign scribes that covered the tour, local critics and no doubt Erasmus himself would suggest it was the Lions who started it.

The two coaches had agreed ahead of the series that, because of the unique circumstances in which the tour was being played, meaning Covid and the attendant protocols and quarantining plus the absence of match-day crowds, they would always focus on the positive.

So, when Lions coach Warren Gatland, on a day when South Africans desperately needed something positive to distract them as KZN was burning, chose to highlight what he felt was an illegal Faf de Klerk tackle after the game against an SA A team that was the Springboks in all but name, it understandably didn’t go down well in the Bok camp.

And when Gatland then followed up in the build-up to the first test by criticising the appointment of South African Marius Jonker as the TMO, and didn’t really stop short of accusing Jonker of a lack of impartiality, the fat was dropped into the frying pan.

It did get nasty after that, the travelling media got nasty, and while even the hardest fought and hotly contested series normally ends with some kind of acknowledgement from the vanquished, be it the contestants themselves or their supporters and media, that it is just sport after all and congratulations are due, this time there was none of that.

HEINOUS VILLAINS AREN'T SPAWNED IN HEALTHY SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS

When you give it proper thought, the reasons for that become perhaps more obvious. If you line up history’s villains, those responsible for the real atrocious, heinous crimes, you won’t find too many people in that lot who had vibrant social lives. If there is a type, perhaps the Unabomber, Ted Kacynski, who was not exactly a gregarious, social human being, is the archetype.

Being isolated, being alone, being away from your fellow human being and being shut away from social engagement can do strange things to people. Many of us probably know people who showed a different side to their personalities, and not a good one, during the hard lockdown this country experienced when Covid first arrived in 2020.

It’s within that context that the noise that overshadowed the rugby during last year’s series needs to be viewed - it wasn’t a normal tour and normal series because the coaches and players were shut away from the people that would normally be their support and that would in normal times be their escape from the pressure that comes with representing your country in a high-profile sports event.

There’s always some semblance of a win-at-all-costs mentality at the highest level of international team sport. The so-called Bodyline Ashes cricket series between Australia and England wasn’t a polite meeting of gentlemen intent on being pleasant to one another in the 1930s, and when New Zealand selected a boxer, Kevin Skinner, in the All Black front row for the historic series against the Boks in 1956 there was definitely a sense that it was for a purpose that went beyond just sport.

National pride was on the line, there was a sense of patriotism that took over, and modern South Africans should know all about that. For why is it that the Springboks have such a good record in World Cup finals related to their record in the years between World Cups?

There may be a few reasons, but prime among them is surely that in this country, when the team gets to that point of a global competition, and more so in rugby than any other sport, then it becomes much more than just a game. It becomes a war.

SOLITUDE INTENSIFIED WIN AT ALL COSTS MENTALITY

Watch the previous SuperSport TV rugby documentary series, Chasing the Sun, and you can’t fail to notice how strong a role nationalism plays in the motivation of the Boks. It is something other countries are perhaps unable to replicate.

Think of all of that and then apply it to the Springboks, or the Lions for that matter, isolated in their respective hotels during the 2021 series. They only had themselves for company, there was none of the distraction afforded by well-wishers and sympathisers that they might encounter in normal times. And yet the pressure to win was the same as it always is, perhaps even worse due to the extraordinary sacrifices all the competitors had to make just to ensure the series took place.

Without having watched any episodes of the Two Sides series yet, it probably doesn’t require a soothsayer to predict that by the end of it we are going to have seen players and management members we thought we knew as nice, affable people take on the mindset of axe murderers.

It just wasn’t an environment that promoted the bonhomie and backslapping of the fair play mentality that, Orwell’s observations aside, we still at least see a small semblance of during and after major international sporting stand-offs.

With no spectators, and yes, with no pubs available or open at that time, not that they could have visited them anyway because of the strict Covid protocols, the fun side of sport was lost. It became win at all costs to a level beyond what is normally meant by that phrase. And that knowledge adds to the intensity of the desire to get the never-seen-before behind-the-scenes view of what really went on in the respective camps that Two Sides will afford us.