STRIKING IT RICH: On the frontier Boks have to cross and the Purple People Eaters

WORLD CHAMPS NEED TO WIN IN THE IN-BETWEEN YEARS

A few days before the Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama in 2019 Rassie Erasmus and his Springbok management team hosted the South African media at a lunch in the team hotel in Tokyo Bay.

Rassie made a speech and then I was given the task, as the print journalist at the lunch who had the most mileage in him, to make a speech on behalf of my fellow scribes as a way of thanks.

In that impromptu speech, I found myself exhorting Rassie and his management not to focus just on World Cup wins but to make their next goal the attainment of something no Bok coach or management team has done in the professional era - win consistently in the years in between World Cups.

If you look back at World Cups since South Africa have started their participation, they lead the pack by some distance. New Zealand’s first win was in the inaugural tournament in 1987 in their own country, and South Africa weren’t competing. So the All Blacks have won two World Cups to the Springboks’ four since this country has been part of it.

Australia’s first win in 1991 was also before the Bok participation, so they have one win to South Africa’s four. And England of course were the only northern hemisphere winner thus far, beating Australia with Jonny Wilkinson’s drop-goal in the 2003 final.

But where the Boks haven’t really featured in those years is in the Tri-Nations and Rugby Championship competitions that have been the staple in the southern hemisphere since the first one in 1996.

The Boks won the Tri-Nations under Nick Mallett’s coaching in 1998, under Jake White in 2004, Peter de Villiers in 2009, Rassie in 2019 and again last year. That’s five trophies in 28 years, with the one year where the Boks didn’t participate being the Covid year, 2020.

Most of the other years have seen the All Blacks prevail, with Australia only managing a brief period of consistency around the turn of the century before falling away (their last win was in the truncated tournament in the 2015 World Cup year).

Such dominance from one nation does not make for a good competition, but the Boks now have a chance to change that by winning back-to-back Championships for the first time. It won’t be easy because the All Blacks are into their second year under Scott Robertson and should improve on last year, plus the Boks have to play them twice away.

Australia have been battle hardened by the British and Irish Lions series and started to make an improvement on last season’s end of year tour, and Argentina are becoming more competitive with every year.

But they do start as favourites, and we will know more about their chances of making it back-to-back triumphs in the southern hemisphere competition after they have hosted the Wallabies in Johannesburg on Saturday.

SENIORS TAKE THE LOWER LEVEL

The word I might have been looking for when explaining why I was asked to make that speech in Tokyo was probably “senior”. As in, I was seen to be the most senior rugby writer there. But what the heck does that mean? Apart from that, I am getting on in years.

It was something I thought about at the Cape Town Station a few days ago. Well, the Cape Town Bus Station, to be precise. Yes, I decided to experience the Greyhound Dreamliner again as my means to get to the Highveld for Saturday’s game, just like I did for the All Black game last year.

Apart from the reasons given last year, like the fact that the bus stations in the cities are usually much closer to where you want to be than airports and that the downstairs compartment on a Dreamliner is like the first class cabin of a jumbo jet, there was superstition.

In my job I shouldn’t care whether the Boks win or lose but it is hard not to be a South African when you are a South African.

In other words, I do prefer the Boks to win. And I do have a bit of the superstition thing that someone like the former Proteas cricketer Neil McKenzie used to be known for (I used to have my own rituals when watching him bat by the way and whether it worked or not will only be established if I ever get to ask him if he was happy with his test career).

So if the Boks beat the All Blacks last year and I travelled to the game by bus, surely it would tempt the wrong type of fate for Rassie and his team if this year I took the 39 000 feet up in the air route to Joburg? Maybe not, but anyway that’s my excuse.

Let’s not digress any more, the reason I thought about my senior status was because the lady who checked our tickets at the door to the bus initially wouldn’t let me go to the downstairs compartment, where the seats are like beds, because that area was reserved for “senior citizens”.

Eventually she relented and said that if anyone asks, I must tell them I am a senior citizen.

I am not completely clear what a senior citizen is, but I don’t think I am one yet. And that she had her doubts over whether or not I qualify might be a compliment too. But for some reason it did get me thinking of that word “senior”. To my mind I have been “senior” every since I was at primary school. Where the school I went to was Northlands Senior Primary.

Before that I was at Northway Infants. Which by the way I think there were plenty of in the upstairs compartment of the bus. I heard them when the bus stopped to pick up passengers. A good reason not to travel upstairs…not that I have any problem with tiny babies. I was one once. Around the last time the Wallabies won in Johannesburg…

NO CAVIAR OR VODKA BUT BRING YOUR OWN

Bus trips can be horrible trips if you end up in the wrong company. I took a bus from London to Edinburgh on one of my tours to that side of the world about 20 years ago. I can’t remember why, because the train between those two cities is much quicker.

But anyway, for whatever reason, I went by bus and made sure I booked a window seat. As the trip was overnight, I made an effort to fall asleep, and I succeeded. But I got woken up somewhere en route by a young woman with very big teeth and an even bigger bag of hot chips who asked me if I would move so that she and her boyfriend could sit together.

Like many people who get woken up unexpectedly, I became Captain Grumpy, meaning I was as tetchy as Allan Border could be when his Australian team lost test matches. In short, I gave her a flat no. But she didn’t see the flat part and then offered me her chips. I wasn’t hungry, so I said no again. With the same degree of flatness.

It was a battle I later regretted winning because her boyfriend could have featured in the film Trainspotting. If you have seen it, you will know what I mean. For the rest of the journey, I felt, though this may have been an overactive imagination, that I was the target of verbal. Just about everything I overheard during a long stop for roadworks seemed to revolve around what I might look like in a body bag.

When I arrived in Edinburgh, the chilly feeling didn’t abate because the bloke, and maybe he wasn’t her boyfriend after al,l because they appeared to separate at the station, followed me through the streets right to my hotel. I was seriously wishing by then that I had just eaten the chips and moved seats.

The good thing about the Dreamliner, or at least if you get to sit where the senior citizens sit, is that it doesn’t matter where you sit. It’s comfortable. And you can sleep. As I say, like first class on a flight.

Except I have travelled first class once in my life, so I know that is bollocks. Travel in luxury on an airliner and you get offered vodka and caviar before you take off. Or at least I was. There’s no vodka and caviar on a Dreamliner. I can’t imagine they’d stop you from bringing your own, though. Just tell them you are a senior citizen.

THE LAND OF THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATERS

The sleep was good. I woke up at 5.30 am when the bus stopped at Colesberg, and the passengers were invited to go into the Ultra City or One Stop or whatever it was for refreshments. The last place I remembered seeing before that was Laingsburg, so those who are familiar with driving the N1 will know that was a sod of a long sleep.

The sun coming up over the Karoo was a sight to behold but what really got me excited was Welkom. Goodness knows why the bus diverts itself from the N1 like that, as it is a long enough journey as it is, but it crossed my mind that I hadn’t been to Welkom since I think it was the 1997 British and Irish Lions tour.

The year before that, we were there when the All Blacks were touring, and I also went there with the French for a midweek game in 1993, and in my years at the Cape Argus, when they sent me to every Western Province game, I visited for provincial games. What was the stadium called back then? North-West Stadium?

For some reason, Welkom always resonates with me as rugby country, and it is not only because it gave us Seabelo Senatla and Jacques Nienaber, among others, but because I associate it with the years that what is now the Sharks, but was then Natal, spent in the B Section of the Currie Cup.

It was Eastern Transvaal (the Red Devils) who consigned Natal to B Section status in a promotion-relegation game in Springs (the Pam Brink Stadium) in 1981, but it was usually Northern Free State who kept them there for several seasons.

First by beating them into top spot in the B Section and then, having acquired their A Section status, beating Natal in the promotion-relegation game in 1984. A week after that promotion game Natal under Wynand Claassen’s captaincy beat Free State in a memorable Currie Cup semifinal in Durban (the A Section runners up had to play B Section winners) to make the final against WP in Cape Town, but it didn’t alleviate the gloom I felt as a Natal supporter. There was going to be another year in the B Section to look forward to.

Northern Free State had some tough players in those days, and there was a theory that was born around the Natal softies (because they were lawyers etc) just not being tough enough to beat a team of players who spent their days working on the mines.

I have no idea if they were mine workers or not, but the team captained by scrumhalf Pieter Sonnekus and featuring big men like the lock John Ryan was tough and they always seemed to get the better of Natal, who eventually had to rely on SARB (as SARU was then) decree to get out of the B Section.

DICK COCKS COINED THE NAME

It was then that what are now known as the Griffons became the ‘Purple People Eaters’ and I am pretty certain that, although that nickname is often repeated by people who weren’t educated in Natal and reared on Perks Pies and bunny chow, it was Dick Cocks who first coined that name.

Cocks was an Australian who, apart from having played for the Wallabies and being the unfortunate man who led Natal on that day in 1981 that they plunged into the B Section, was also a gifted entertainer and a very funny wordsmith.

He used to write a column in the Natal Mercury called “Cocks and Bull” and it was brilliant and funny and he spared no one, not least the general manager of the NRU at that time, Roger Gardner, who rightly might have taken umbrage at being constantly referred to in the column only as “the Warthog”.

Dick and I got to know each other when I started working at the Mercury, and he told me that there were occasions when Roger, whom I thought of as a good administrator, threatened to sue him.

It was particularly brazen of Dick to write about Roger in that way because he was a Natal selector at the time. He, Piet Strydom and Poenie Holm served for a long time as the Natal selection committee when Ian McIntosh was coach, but it didn’t stop Dick writing it like he saw it.

And rightly so, what’s the point of a column if you don’t have an opinion? You could ask after this what is the point of a column if you don’t have a subject, for it feels like eons since I last made mention of tomorrow’s match, but anyway…

ALTITUDE REMINDER IS ONE OF JAKE’S LEGACIES

I was at Loftus the other morning to be interviewed for a television documentary, and while I won’t mention the subject of the doccie, because I suppose I shouldn’t, I can mention that at some point they wanted to film me walking out of the Loftus tunnel in a contemplative mood. On that walk, it was impossible to miss the reminder of the now former Bulls coach, Jake White.

“Altitude 1 350 metres. It matters”. Or something like that. And long should it remain there. From a Bok viewpoint, it is a pity something similar isn’t placed in the tunnel at Emirates Airlines Park. I sense altitude does matter a great deal to the Wallabies.

Their only win at altitude since 1963 was in Bloemfontein in 2010, when Kurtley Beale kicked a monstrous penalty to win a game that at one stage the Aussies led 31-6 before the Boks came back at them, no doubt with the help of altitude.

I did write in this column last week that I thought the Wallabies had no chance in this game just because they are so terrified of Joburg, and because they are also less familiar with coming here now that South Africa doesn’t participate in Super Rugby.

But I suppose there is a counter-point to that: The current Wallaby team doesn’t feature that many players who were scarred by past visits (only write once you’ve finished arguing with yourself, Gavin!).

My money still says the Boks will win, though, and with some daylight between the teams on the scoreboard. Because while altitude doesn’t seem to matter to the All Blacks, it does to the Wallabies.

It should be an entertaining game, and I am looking forward to it. I am flying home by the way. The bus trip was fun, but doing it in both directions, as I discovered last year, is a bit much.