STRIKING IT RICH: On pies, rugby passion of E Cape and out of the box Rassie

PE ATMOSPHERE TAKES SOME BEATING

There’s a weird modern trend I try to avoid following. The one where people, perhaps because their focus is on their most recent memories, want to rate something on a scale that is topped with the words “best ever”. As in “It was the best EVER!

But this past weekend that phrase “best EVER” came pretty close to describing the atmosphere at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium when the Boks beat Italy. There have been many great atmospheres at local venues in recent years, and 2022 at the Mbombela Stadium when the All Blacks were put to the sword still stands out as a special day and the weekend as a special weekend.

What did my colleague Brenden Nel write? Something about it being a bad day to be a beer in Nelspruit. It was something like that in Gqeberha, or PE as everyone still seems to call it, this past Saturday. Indeed, from the night before, when the beachfront venues in Summerstrand like Barney’s Tavern were filled to overflowing, and on into match day.

It felt like the whole city was on a festival footing and it was carried through into the rhythm of the stadium atmosphere, where it really rocked. The singing of the national anthem felt as emotional as it has been anywhere.

Yes, the celebration of the new South Africa, and the coming together of races to support national teams, and also individuals representing the country, like Dricus du Plessis, has become so commonplace now that it is almost not a talking point anymore.

Yet somehow in Gqeberha it seems more pronounced or obvious. Perhaps because of the deep historical roots of rugby in the black communities in not just that city but throughout the Eastern Cape.

AFTER THE RUGBY THEY FLOCKED FOR PIES

Instead of driving back to Cape Town on the Sunday after the game I followed the signposts directing drivers to Mkahanda (formerly Grahamstown) and East London. It’s not a holiday, but a change of working environment.

Mostly an attempt to escape the bitter cold of Cape Town for a bit longer, but I am currently working from Buccaneers Beach Lodge in Chintsa, probably between 30 to 40 kilometres to the old Transkei side of East London. And there is no better place to recharge.

But driving here, or at least the initial part of the journey, was more fraught than expected. There were so many cars on the road. Most who have driven that road, and who appreciate a really good pie, Cornish pasty or sausage roll (I always have to have two because they are that good) will know Nanaga Farm Stall.

It is at the confluence of the road to Nxuba (formerly Cradock) and Bloemfontein/Johannesburg, where it parts ways with the road to Grahamstown and East London and if you take the R72 then you will end up in Port Alfred.

Anyway, clearly it being school holidays there were always going to be lots of people on the road, and I ascribed the heavy traffic to that. However, the packed parking at Nanaga and the number of green and gold shirts and jerseys told the story of what the traffic was really about.

Even the sign put up to warn people about lock-jamming, which has been there for a while, had wording referencing the Boks.

There’d been a flood of people from East London and other areas into Gqeberha, and no doubt from the other towns in the region too, and everyone was celebrating the Boks like they’d just won the World Cup. They’d only beaten Italy.

“They make us proud,” said a shop attendant to a shopper in a Bok shirt at the Gqeberha shop where I stocked up on supplies, and that was pretty much the vibe at Nanaga and beyond that too.

All of which of course brings up the point I made last week - surely something has to be done to ensure that the rugby appetite of the people of this region does not get sated on such rare occasions as a Bok test match?

There hadn’t been one here since 2021, and those two games against Argentina were played in front of an empty stadium because of Covid. I was there for those two games. It was depressing and chalk and cheese in comparison with the vibrancy of this past weekend.

STICK’S EMOTION SUMMED UP THE NEED

I am one of those who can get a bit misty eyed myself when I see someone else get choked up, and it happened to me on the eve of the game when the Bok assistant coach Mzwandile Stick, known as Stokke, struggled to hold back his emotion when he was asked what being back in his home town with the Boks meant to him.

He said that he would not be who he is today if it was not for the region and the people he had grown up with, and he spoke of the frustration of a rugby hungry region that they don’t have a franchise to support.

If no-one was listening before, surely they should have started listening then. Yes, we know rugby politics has messed up the rugby administration in the region, but when the Southern Kings played their last season of Super Rugby before that competition was cut, they did fairly well and some of the games I attended were passionately supported.

The Stormers, who don’t even represent the region, drew 28 000 to their Champions Cup game against Toulon last December, and there was a good crowd a few seasons before that when the Stormers played the Dragons in a URC game.

FERTILE GROUND FOR RUGBY INVESTORS

It is not just the people of Gqeberha who have been starved of top rugby because of maladministration, but those in East London too. If someone with big money wanting to create a franchise is looking for a fertile ground for investment, then the Eastern Cape is it - and if you don’t agree that would be for the benefit of South African rugby as a whole, just look at how many top players spent their formative years in the region.

There must be many promising young schoolboys who fall through the net or disappear just because they don’t have a team to support to sustain their interest, and who are reluctant to do what so many do - which is to be lured to KZN schools in particular but also other regions on scholarships. Not everyone likes living away from home.

Of course I am not naive enough to forget the big stumbling block, which is that like the Cheetahs, there isn’t a franchise competition for them to compete in. But if Welsh rugby ever decides to bow to the calls to leave the URC and join up with England in an Anglo/Welsh league, which does kind of make sense for them, there might be an opportunity.

It just requires someone with big bucks and a willingness to take everything over lock, stock and barrel, which would mean the shoddy administrators that have been keeping rugby back in the region get left out of it.

AUSSIE AND NZ EVENTING PEOPLE CAN LEARN FROM SA


One of the great things about the Qgeberha game was that the atmosphere didn’t have to be created, it happened on its own. There was a time when the stadium DJ’s, to my mind anyway, got it wrong by playing music over the play.

Brenden still struggles with that at Loftus in games not involving the Boks, and wrote a column about it after, in his view, the stadium DJ got the mood wrong when the Bulls were playing out the dying minutes of their narrow loss in the 2023/2024 URC final against Glasgow Warriors.

But generally now the South African presentation at games has become pitch perfect. Not so in Australia and New Zealand. I completely agreed with those UK rugby writers who vented their spleens over the playing of Sweet Caroline when Luke Cowan-Dicky was having his British and Irish Lions tour ending injury attended to.

And watching the All Black games against France these past few Saturdays it has been tempting to turn the television sound off because of the cacophony of noise coming from the stadiums. The music there doesn’t just happen during the play, but even appears to encroach on the singing of the anthems.


Sorry if this makes me appear like what we used to back in the day refer to as a Mother Grundy, but while there is a place for music at sports events, it should never become the main thing and be allowed to ruin the experience for those who are there to engage with the game.

TMOs SHOULD ONLY BE ENGAGED BY REFERRAL

Which, because music is a welcome diversion during the long gaps when TMOs and referees are conferring, cues the subject of technology being over-used to the point that it takes all spontaneity out of the game.

A few weeks ago, as written in this column at the time, I was at my old school in Durban for a reunion game. What was particularly pleasurable about that experience was that there were no TMOs slowing the game down. What the referee ruled stood, even if it was hotly contested by some players and their supporters, as it has always been in rugby. And then the game moved on.

The modern way of TMOs appearing to do their best to find reasons why a try should not be awarded, as if they were being incentivised for tries that were chalked off, was particularly noticeable the weekend before last. It happened several times during the British and Irish Lions game, the All Black game and of course the Boks against Italy.

It is becoming almost commonplace now for mention to be made of how many tries were chalked off. The TMO was initially introduced to rule on the absolute howler, something that was clear and obvious.

That isn’t the case anymore and it is taking spontaneity out of the game as when a try is scored it always feels like there will be a good chance that even after the conversion has been kicked some over-zealous TMO will pick up something no-one else noticed.

There is a way around this - in cricket the Television Umpire isn’t asked to adjudicate on anything outside of running, stumping and the legality of a low catch unless he is asked to by either the fielding captain or the batsman. And there are a limited number of referrals allowed.

It should be the same in rugby. Each team gets two or three referrals, and you keep those referrals if you turn out to be right. If you use up your referrals and you end up losing out to a refereeing error, then too bad.

WHAT JASPER DID WAS SILLY

Okay, so there shouldn't be a problem with TMOs checking for foul play that could lead to a card, for picking it up and sanctioning it after the game is a bit after the event, although in many incidents that lead to cards in modern rugby it is just a case of the law being an ass.

That wasn’t the case with the Jasper Wiese incident at the weekend. Once that head-butt was replayed, referee Andrew Brace was duty bound to red card the Bok No 8.

Patriotism is understandable and it is a reason why the Boks are such good business for South African rugby but sometimes it can be overdone and I find it hard to understand the number of people who have been trying to defend Wiese.

The player will know what he did was wrong, and silly, and the four game suspension he has copped because of it is a fair one.

OUT OF THE BOX RASSIE IS GOOD FOR RUGBY

Just as South Africans can at times be blinded by their patriotism, so sometimes it appears overseas pundits and some overseas rugby people get blinded by their anathema to Rassie Erasmus.

Reading some of the online comments sections to the UK newspapers made it appear Rassie had committed some terrible crime and was changing the spirit of rugby permanently with his unexpected ploys in the Gqeberha game.

Yet what did Rassie do really other than do what he does - which is make the sport more interesting by generating a talking point?

The fact that the false kick-off and midfield lineout drives were grabbing headlines in the UK media when there was a British and Irish Lions tour meant Rassie succeeded in his mission. Which is to have a bit of fun, attract some attention to the game, which is needed, while at the same time testing some boundaries.

Some UK readers compared the Boks deliberately messing up the kick-off and the deployment of midfield lineout drives to Dean Richards’ infamous ‘Bloodgate’ scandal of two decades ago but it was a million miles from it. Rassie doesn’t break rugby’s laws, he tests them.

And as he pointed out in the post-match press conference, now that he’s tried them those things have a limited shelf-life. The kick-off ploy didn’t work anyway as Italy got a free kick at the resultant scrum.

It’s not something he’s likely to try at the start of the big game against New Zealand in Auckland. If World Rugby bans the lineout drive set up in general play, I doubt he will be losing any sleep over it.

I sometimes think Rassie is driven by his enjoyment of the reaction, and in this case he got it. The Italian coach said his team was never going to win the game. And he was right. The result was predictable, and Italy were under-strength.

Which really should be the talking point in the foreign media. That France went to New Zealand for a three-test series with a second team and Italy left so many top players at home is indicative of the need for the introduction of a global season.

That’s what World Rugby, and the global rugby media, should be concerning itself with. Not the next instalment of the ongoing soap-opera known as “What Rassie did”.

But rugby needs talking points and people who think outside of the box or it will all become staid. Far from being bad for rugby, Rassie might be just what the sport needs.