BOK FEATURE: Dublin recollections bring sobering perspective ahead of AVIVA  

“Last night everywhere you went in Dublin there was just one person everyone wanted to talk about - Jock White!”

There is no well-known person in rugby called Jock White, but there is a Jake White, and it was the Springbok coach of the time that was being referred to in an early morning crossing to the Johannesburg radio station, 702.

It was Friday morning, the flight to Ireland from Cape Town via Heathrow had been a long one and we’d only reached our destination late on Thursday afternoon. But you don’t arrive in Dublin without going out for a drink, and once you are started in that city it can easily become an all-nighter. Which it just about had been.

Which was why Jake became Jock, something I was only informed of after the crossing by Mark Keohane, who was sharing a hotel suite with me on that Dublin trip in 2004. Yes, 2004, the year that the Boks, having won the Tri-Nations for only the second time in their history a few months before, were beaten with the considerable help of Kiwi referee Paul Honiss.

Ireland were pretty average back then, which was why Jake had got the Irish media and public into such a huff that he was the talk of the city that Thursday night. White was asked at a press conference if there were any Irish players who would make the Bok team he was selecting for the Saturday game at what was then still known as Landsdowne Road. His answer was that there were none.

The Irish can be a sensitive lot so they didn’t respond well to it. Well, maybe the team did, for they raised their game against John Smit’s team and might have won even without the leg up they were given by the referee.

To refresh memories, or inform those who might not have been born yet, Honiss awarded Ireland a penalty not far from the Bok line and issued the South African skipper a warning that no more infringements would be tolerated. Smit asked for permission to address his players and that permission was given.

While Smit’s back was turned and the Boks were being called into a huddle, Ireland’s flyhalf Ronan O’Gara took a quick tap and ran in the five pointer. Smit protested vigorously but Honiss was undeterred and the try stood.

SMIT DID GET AN APOLOGY BUT IT WAS TOO LATE

Honiss did apparently go to Smit after the game to apologise for what he acknowledged was a mistake, but that didn’t help the Boks as the result stood. The difference between the teams was five points, with Ireland winning 17-12, so it was understandable that the Boks were incensed. Honiss later apologised to South Africans publicly in a radio interview.

But that was in the future and there was a funereal mood that descended on the Bok camp. After winning the Tri-Nations the South Africans had been confident that they would pull off the rare feat of completing a Grand Slam - meaning winning away against all four of the Home Unions.

They’d already beaten Wales in Cardiff the week before.
They did get well beaten later in the tour by England, so the claim that Honiss robbed them of a Grand Slam may have come across as moot, but he did rob them of a Grand Slam opportunity.

Two years later we, meaning myself and fellow long time SA rugby writer Keohane, were in Dublin once more, this time for a game that was to celebrate 100 years of the Boks touring the UK and Ireland.

The Boks didn’t wear the green and gold that night but a jersey that resembled the one that Paul Roos’ tourists had worn in 1906, but that wasn’t the only thing that was off about that weekend. White was still the coach and was under a lot of pressure and had been taking a lot of flak from the media, from Keohane in particular.

I remember Keo and I bumping into Jake in a crowded foyer on the morning of the game, which was played on a Friday night, and feeling that the coach might have been subtly threatening Keo by pointing out to him how many tough Bok supporters from Johannesburg there were in the room.

THERE WAS AN EMERALD INCOMING TIDE IN 2006 GAME

White did have reason to feel aggrieved and for feeling under pressure. That was the year where the injury that ruled Schalk Burger out for the entire season played havoc with what up to then had been an excellent Bok record under White.

The nadir was the 49-0 defeat to the Wallabies in Brisbane in that year’s Tri-Nations, but before that White had surrendered his unblemished home record with the Boks when they were well beaten by France in Cape Town.

Clearly White’s Boks were destined to struggle without Burger, and the temperature was raised by the noise that was constantly hovering around the most likely replacement as an abrasive, ball-scavenging openside flank - Luke Watson.

White refused to select Watson, who was by that time playing for the Stormers after moving from the Sharks, but Watson’s form at franchise and provincial level was such that he got voluble support from the critics.

And the crescendo of unhappiness was raised every time that White, who memorably told the media that he didn’t believe in the “fetcher” type flank, and that the only fetchers he knew were his sons, who fetched him beers from the fridge, selected a player unsuited to the role.

From memory, both Joe van Niekerk and Pierre Spies, normally No8s or otherwise fitting the mould of blindside flanks, were tried there.

Indeed, White would never have made it to Ireland as Bok coach, or for that matter to becoming a World Cup winning in France a year later, had it not been for Andre Pretorius’ clutch match winning penalty against the All Blacks in what was effectively a dead rubber Tri-Nations game in Rustenberg a few months before that.

“What are you smiling about, now we’ve got Jake for the next year,” growled a top Afrikaans rugby writer of the time as I headed to the press conference after that game. Jake did have his enemies, and he had to put up with a lot in his time.

That 2006 game was a complete disaster for the Boks, and was always going to be when the selection announcement was made. Bryan Habana, usually a wing, was at outside centre, an experiment that did not work, and there were several unknowns or newcomers in the team, plus a a kid named Frans Steyn who played wing that night.

Steyn was the only bright point of that horrible night for South African rugby, with the Irish, with their partisan crowd firmly behind them and creating a cacophony of noise in the old stadium, making it a difficult place for either the Boks or their supporters, or in our case media, to breathe.

It was one of those nights where, as former All Black coach and recent England women’s World Cup winning coach John Mitchell would put it, “the tide was just coming in”.

JAKE HAD REASON TO FEEL AGGRIEVED

Come in it did, and not just from the Irish, but also from the media afterwards. I was probably softer on that tour on White than some of my colleagues for there was context, and here was why White was right to feel aggrieved - he’d asked for permission from the SA rugby bosses to take an understrength squad on tour and had been granted it.

For White, the World Cup some 11 months later was all important, and there were many players he rested. Skipper Smit was one of the few experienced forwards in the unit. So poor though the Boks were that night, with the 32-15 scoreline in favour of Ireland actually flattering them in a game where they conceded heaps of penalties and turnovers, I did feel there should have been more levity from White’s critics than there was.

There should have also been more understanding from his employers too, for after all they had signed off the understrength squad and ought to have known that results like the one in Dublin could happen.

As it turned out they called White home to explain himself later in the tour, but fortunately by then the Boks had atoned for Dublin by comprehensively beating England at Twickenham, something they hadn’t done in a while, in the second match of a two game series where the first one the Boks lost narrowly after dominating for 60 minutes.

CROKE PARK TOOK GLOSS OFF A GOOD BOK YEAR

The next time the Boks were in Dublin the old Lansdowne Road was being revamped into what is now the AVIVA Stadium, where Saturday’s game will be played. It was 2009, the year the Boks captained by John Smit and coached by Peter de Villiers, had firmly established themselves as the world’s No1 team by winning the series against the British and Irish Lions before dominating the Tri-Nations.

But their success in the southern hemisphere season was not replicated on that end of year tour, and they lost to Ireland in a game played in mist at Croke Park, renowned as the cultural and spiritual home of Irish sport.

I did not do that tour and funnily enough watched it at the home of the many times in this piece mentioned 2007 World Cup coach White in Hermanus. With Koehane present.

It is a funny old world that the three of us should watch that game together, but it wasn’t a good day for the Boks and it gave them less of a leg to stand on when later that weekend World Rugby announced it’s awards for the year and the world leading Boks were shunned in several instances.

Times have changed since then, and there are no less than three Bok players up for the World Rugby Player of the Year Award, with the announcements due on Sunday, but they haven’t changed so much in terms of what Dublin has resembled for the Boks.

It has been a place for wake-up calls, with the first game I watched there being when Kitch Christie suffered a rare defeat as Bok coach in the last game of the 1994 tour (the game was not given test status and the Boks also lost to Scotland A on that tour).

The Boks snuck home there when Ireland rugby returned to headquarters under its new name of AVIVA Stadium in 2010, winning 23-21 when Victor Matfield was standing in as captain for the injured John Smit, and I was there again in November 2012, when the Boks won 16-12 in the first end of year tour they undertook with Heyneke Meyer as coach.

2017 WAS THE LOWEST POINT OF ALL

But that was when the laughter stopped from a South African viewpoint and the Irish became ever more smiley, with a 29-15 defeat following in 2014. Probably the lowest point of all Ireland visits for the Boks came in 2017, when Ireland won 38-3 in the game that effectively ended any chance that Allister Coetzee may have had of surviving into another year as Bok coach.

I was at the Nedbank Golf Challenge that weekend with among others former Bok assistant coach and player Dick Muir, and we both agreed it was a good Dublin trip to miss. Dick actually fell asleep during the game and I remember thinking he was lucky.

Another good game to miss was the subsequent one in Dublin in 2022, when Ireland snuck home by three points on a day where the Boks were profligate with their point scoring opportunities, something that was replicated in the narrow loss to those opponents in a World Cup pool game in Paris the following year.

The Boks will be looking for a change to their Dublin fortunes on Saturday as, while Ireland tend to fail at World Cups and South Africa don’t, 13 years is a long time to put up with so many smiling Irish eyes after head to head encounters between the two teams.

Hopefully from a South African viewpoint it won’t be a repeat of 2009, when the Boks dominated the world but still lost to Ireland…