STRIKING IT RICH: If you only play Aussies it's inevitable you'll sink

EXCEPTIONAL HOSPITALITY

Being in my home city meant there was no touring as such, although Cape Town when the All Blacks are in town is in some ways a different place to what it is at other times. I didn’t get to see the crowds that apparently thronged the All Black hotel in Claremont, but the whole week there was a vibe at the Springbok team hotel on the foreshore.

Sports journos who tour are a dying breed, and my travel going forward looks likely to be self-funded, but the two weeks the Kiwis were in the country, was a reminder of what it was like before Covid hit and there was more personal interaction with the people we write about. Perhaps the new breed of rugby writers are different, but us old timers didn’t sign up for a job that entailed sitting at home logging onto zoom conference calls. We wanted to see people, and the world.

The Bok/All Black fortnight reminded me of what Stephen Jones, the British rugby writer (he writes for an English paper but is actually Welsh), once said to me. Everyone in South Africa who reads him in The Sunday Times might think he hates us and this country, but it isn’t true. He told me that when he comes here, and sees the blue sky, which he thinks is bluer than anywhere else, and gets exposed to the rugby obsession of a city like Cape Town, he somehow feels more alive. I’ve been feeling more alive and at a time when there really is too much rugby, and it was starting to get staid, it has woken me up.

I didn’t stay at the Bok team hotel, but at home, and the hospitality there was excellent. I give five stars to my wife for that. Although that’s not to say that it was five star hotel hospitality. I still did most of the cooking, which I can’t imagine I’d be expected to do in any kind of hotel, let alone a five star one.

What travel there was, was limited to driving in from my home in Blouberg (NB: Bloubergrise not Bloubergstrand though they are near enough to each other), where mercifully, after my 20 hours on one of them travelling back from Joburg last Sunday night, I only got to see the outside of buses. There were MiCity buses, and the Springbok buses outside the hotel, and I also spotted the Springbok buses (yes, buses, the squad is obviously too big these days for just one bus!) in Woodstock when I was picking up my colleague Brenden Nel the night before the game.

Brenden came out to see where the other half live, meaning my local at Blue Peter Hotel, where the sundowner is a real sundowner as the sun sinks into or behind the sea, depending on whether or not you did geography at school and whether or not you might be that dying breed known as a Flat Earther.

It’s a scene which Stormers coach John Dobson often appears profoundly jealous of when he’s fronting an online Friday afternoon press conference from somewhere far away to the north of us when it’s winter over there and summer here and I hint that he should hurry with what he’s doing as the smell of hops is calling. It’s his fault for thinking Friday afternoon is good for that kind of thing (meaning press conferences).

Anyhoo, spurious mentions of people involved in rugby don’t combine to make this a rugby column, it takes the All Blacks to do that, and let it be said that absorbing though the recent series against Ireland was, there is nothing to match the tension and atmosphere of a Boks v All Black game.

GERD

The above is something I have. Look it up. Apparently 63-million Americans have it so hold off on the concern. There are almost as many Americans with GERD as there are Americans who will vote Trump at this next election. Hopefully it, meaning GERD and not Trump, although that might be nice, will go away (just my personal opinion, I’m allowed to have one), but when there’s tension there’s often acid reflux. Which is what GERD really is if you haven’t bothered to look it up.

And it happened from the start of the test match to the finish. No matter how often I told myself it was just a game and it didn’t matter, the discomfort just sat there. It might have had something to do with the fact that I had predicted a 10 point win for the Boks in my preview, and told my mates to bet on a 15 point win, and told Brenden on his Youtube column that I thought it might even be another Twickenham… The first half wasn’t turning out as expected and it was tense to the end.

But while the bombastic nature of my predictions, and thank goodness no-one asked me to follow up the Twickenham one as the expectation seemed to be getting incrementally higher, I do believe the Boks are more superior to the All Blacks than the difference of 10 points between them across two test matches reflects.

And the prediction of a 10 point win for the Cape Town game would have been exceeded had Cheslin Kolbe not tried that drop goal near the end. The Boks would have scored a try then and won by 13, but that’s just my take. Speaking of Cheslin, who was again excellent in the game and continues with every appearance to defy all my old size prejudices, I read somewhere him being quoted that he felt the Boks have been well below their best in all games this season. Oh yes, it was on an epistle sent out by a company called SportsBoom, who managed to sit him down after Saturday.

Anyway, Cheslin is right, and that’s my point - early on in the Bok/All Black fortnight I was telling everyone who wanted to listen that I thought the Bok superiority was much more the one they exhibited at Mbombela in 2022 (they won by 16 there) than the one point win in last year’s World Cup final.

The pendulum has swung in the Bok/All Black games since the dark days of 2016/17, and a story penned by Marc Hinton after the Albany massacre in 2017, where he asked “Is this the end of the great rivalry”, has been answered, but just like South Africa used to get up for games against the Kiwis even in the years the Boks were struggling and the All Blacks were soaring, so the New Zealanders do that now.

This may or may not have been said in one of my previous diaries, but I liken it to when my beloved Liverpool were being played off the planet by everyone except their biggest rivals, Manchester United, who were at the time perennial dominators of the league.

Not that for a moment we should compare this All Black team to that Liverpool team. The Kiwis are rebuilding and they are rebuilding to something good, and unlike Liverpool, who went through a few changes of manager before hitting target again, they don’t need to drop Razor to do it. Their biggest stumbling block is them not having us lot playing in Super Rugby anymore. Playing with Australia in their major franchise league is unfortunately a bit like putting them in a large rubbish bag, tying it up and throwing them into a lake. It is inevitable that they will sink.

RESPECTING THE HAKA

Full marks to the Cape Town crowd for respecting the Haka. I thought the Kiwis were a bit precious with the way they responded to the apparent disrespect shown at Ellis Park the previous week, particularly as it was obvious it was just a timing issue. Those of us in the press box there who knew about the plane coming over had the timing of that event at 4.58. That was what we’d been told. It didn’t turn out that way. When the Haka started without the Emirates A380 even yet being a rumble beyond the ramparts of the stadium, we knew there was trouble coming.

What is it with this plane thing and South African rugby anyway? Are we trying to show the rest of the world with this fixation with flying passenger planes over our stadiums, when they fly fighter jets but far less frequently, that this country doesn’t have much of an airforce? Apart from anything else, there’s carbon footprint to be concerned about.

What we did learn was that Flysafair are on time, which is good as they are a much used domestic airline, but the flypast was a memorable part of the 1995 World Cup final and should only have happened once.

Anyhoo, there we go with the digression again, it was good to watch the Haka without airliner accompaniment or that ridiculous “Ole, ole, ole” chorus adopted by local rugby fans but which belongs to another country. South African players generally, and I learned this in the interviewing process for a book I penned in 2019, do respect the Haka and enjoy facing it. When they face the Haka they know they have arrived as a player, and it motivates them.

The Haka is an issue in some overseas rugby countries, but there again ours are a much tougher lot. Note I don’t rank myself as tough, some scurrilous fiend of a fellow rugby writer spoke me into doing my own rendition of what we called the Boere Haka to some late night Kiwi revellers in Wellington sometime in the 1990s and it was only the discovery of some Noah Lyles speed, injected by fear, that got us out of that situation alive.

QUADRENNIAL SERIES MAY END THE LOVE IN

Mark Andrews, that fine Springbok of the 1990s and first two years of the current millennium, told me about his first experience of playing against New Zealand for the book, The Poisoned Chalice, I wrote about the post-isolation Bok coaches back in 2013. He spoke of how after the Haka, when the game started, he was set upon by several All Blacks at the first opportunity, among them Zinzan Brooke, who abused him verbally while rucking his jersey off his back.

There are many tough stories to be told from what happens on the field between these two fierce foe, and of course many of us would have read about the 1956 series in New Zealand, where the All Blacks enlisted an Olympic boxer, Kevin Skinner, to rough up the mighty Bok prop Jaap Bekker. There’s a legendary pic of Bekker’s bloodied face after one of the games in that tempestuous series.

Forgive me if I am wrong, and you can blame it on the GERD, but I can’t remember a punch or anything near even handbags being thrown at DHL Stadium this past weekend, or even at Ellis Park, sorry Emirates Airlines Park, seven days before that. The last big dust up from recall happened in 2008, when the first game subsequent to SA winning the 2007 World Cup the previous November started with a massed brawl.

There is massive respect between the two teams off the field, and both sets of players and the two coaches kept talking about their mutual respect at every opportunity. Razor Robertson congratulated the Boks after the mini-series, and there was none of the rancour and silliness that followed for instance the 2021 British and Irish Lions series and neither was there feeling that I had after the Irish series that the congratulatory words between the two camps were less than sincere.

I wrote before the Ellis Park game that I was not going to the stadium expecting a “love-in”, and it wasn’t, The two games were among the most physical ever witnessed. But there was a massive love-in between the teams off the field. And it is genuine. It may be tested though in 2026, when the teams are set to play the first of what will become a quadrennial four match series between the two teams, with one game at a neutral venue and three in South Africa.

Like the Ashes in cricket tends to be, and most Lions series, a longer series tends to ratchet up the intensity and the rivalry and it is over a longer period so there is more time for controversy, and controversial incidents have more potential impact. Rassie Erasmus might have been less forgiving of Sam Cane’s illegal hit on Siya Kolisi, and cited, had it happened in the first of four games and not two. South Africans might have been whining like the British media did after the Tana Umaga tackle early in the first game that put Brian O’Driscoll out of the 2005 Lions series in New Zealand.

That though isn’t necessarily a bad thing as there is some substance to the theory that no publicity is bad publicity, and the controversy that attended the 2018 cricket test series between South Africa and Australia for instance - remember the Aussie captain crying after Sandpapergate and the Quinton de Kock/David Warner incident at Kingsmead - probably drew more eyes than usual to a five day format series in this country.

Actually, it’s probably the last one most cricket followers have a clear memory of. And it was the David Bairstow run-out incident, and the fall out from that, that turned last year’s Ashes in England into such a watchable and absorbing showdown too.

BOOKED OUT

Okay, so last week’s diary mentioned that there are no pills for stupidity. If there were, maybe the GERD wouldn’t have visited during the Cape Town game like it did. For the sake of honesty, let it be admitted that another contributing factor apart from the stress was probably the glass or two of white and the white bread that made up the falafel shawarma (and chips!!) at a Greenpoint restaurant a few hours before the game, followed by the snacks at the stadium before kick-off.

That the All Blacks visiting is different to other teams visiting Cape Town was exhibited when I tried, as early as Thursday, to book lunch for myself and a few colleagues at the restaurant we’ve made a habit of visiting before big games at the stadium. No can do, came the answer, we’re full booked. And this was pretty early on Thursday!

There was no Irish game in Cape Town so we can’t use that as a measure, but there was no problem getting into said restaurant, which serves an excellent paella by the way, without any form of booking before the Wales test two years ago or for last year’s URC final, semifinal or quarterfinal (the Stormers hosted all three).

But booked out it was, and the drive down Main Road on the day confirmed it. Fortunately there was one place that empty seats, and wasn’t filled with a green and gold throng. We discovered quickly enough that it was because of rotten service, but at least the hunger was sated, and whatever conspires to create GERD was fed.

CAPE CRUSADERS WERE ABSENT

On the subject of green and gold, where were the All Black supporters who supposedly make Cape Town a more hospitable place for the Kiwis than it should otherwise be. On a walk around the stadium concourse shortly before kick-off, myself and Brenden managed to count no more than 50 All Black jerseys. Actually, I don’t think we reached the half century mark. This in a crowd of around 60 000.
The answer may lie in ticket pricing, or, in searching for an answer with more depth to it, perhaps former Stormers CEO Rob Wagner had the answer when he told me after a Crusaders game at Newlands 10 years ago, when there was a lot of trouble, that most of the so-called Cape Crusaders come from the Eastern Cape.

Given that you had to enter into a lottery to get a ticket, and most people would want to travel in a crowd if coming from as far away as Gqeberha, maybe the love for the All Blacks was exceeded by considerations around logistical practicalities.

Or maybe, just maybe, and this is refuted by Razor thanking the fans that visited the hotel earlier in the week and greeted them on their arrival, there are just fewer local All Black fans now that the Bok team is fully transformed. Certainly we appear to have reached a time where the phrase “supported by all South Africans” rings truer than it did before.

MY WIFE’S FINAL SAY

My wife hates rugby. There’s nothing unusual about that, most wives hate it if their husband has another lover. So she isn’t really abreast of who is playing where and when, outside of a World Cup final. But she might have summed up how special the All Black rivalry with South Africa is in a telephone conversation between Joburg and Cape Town before the first game.

“Who are the Boks playing against in this game?”

“The All Blacks”.

“Oh, now that’s quite a game.”