A TOUR FROM THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Back in the days when I worked in newspapers and newspapers sent their rugby writers on tour it felt like I was in France every other year, if not every year.

From memory 1992, 1996, 1997, 1999 (for the World Cup quarterfinal), 2002, 2005 and 2007 for the World Cup saw quite extensive time spent in that wonderful country, with my last visit being the visit by Heyneke Meyer’s team to Stade de France in 2013, a night where the Boks confirmed they were growing by winning 19-10 in a game where the visiting team was good enough to stifle any atmosphere in the stands.

I just remember it feeling flat.

Flat though would not be the word to describe the first experience of a French crowd, which came on the first post-isolation Springbok tour in 1992. It was the first tour the Boks had undertaken since the controversial 1981 series in New Zealand and to mark the occasion of South Africa’s return, the late Dr Danie Craven, then still the head of rugby in this country, was called upon to take the ceremonial kick-off.

Doc died three months later and wasn’t really in condition for the role, and at the cocktail party afterwards his words to the throng of SA journalists like myself went something to the effect of: “Oh, I see all my enemies are here”.

To be fair, I’m not sure if he was meaning me, as I was relatively young in the game then and my only real interaction with him had been when I had phoned him at his home to comment on something for the Natal Mercury.

He ended up first bollocking me for interrupting his viewing of Loving, a television soap opera run in the early evenings in those years and to which he was addicted, and then commenting that I was a new rugby writer that sounded like he wanted a new president of SA rugby.

But Craven’s kick-off was a moment full of bonhomie in comparison to what happened next. The Boks were playing the French Espoirs, meaning French Youth, in Bordeaux in their first tour game and from the real kick-off, taken by the Bok captain Naas Botha, it was clear there was going to be no more bonhomie. Not from the French players, nor from the crowd, who started to buzz in a hostile way.

And so it was for most of the tour. If the Boks played well, and shut out their opponents, that buzz died down. But that didn’t happen often on a tour that the South Africans were horribly underprepared for and was positively Medieval in comparison to the more professional trips that were undertaken there in the years that followed.

For a start, the Boks did almost that entire tour, and France is a big country, on a bus. And us media people followed them on our own bus. With my anathema towards flying, that was good for me, much like Japan and its Bullet Trains, but not good from a professional viewpoint as sitting on a bus all day and then having to work at the destination was exhausting. Remember mobile phones also didn’t exist yet, and neither did the internet.

The South African management had been hopeless with the logistics before the tour, which I suppose is excusable if you consider the Boks hadn’t been anywhere for so long, and we - meaning the media and team - ended up staying at hotels many miles from the city centres.

I remember waking up on my first morning in France to the thundering sound of planes taking off at the Bordeaux Airport, which was just across an open space of ground on which bunny rabbits frollicked. A long, long way from the city centre.

PRAWNS MADE THEM SICK

“If I see another prawn I am going to puke.” Those were the words of Hugh Reece-Edwards, the Springbok fullback, when I encountered him and his Natal teammate Steve Atherton sunning themselves at the seaside hotel in Marseille the Boks and the media stayed in at that juncture of the tour.

It was still relatively early in the trip, but the Bok players were already struggling with the French hospitality, which was a tad over the top. In the sense that every night on that trip there appeared to be some function or another, sometimes two, and the South African palates weren’t used to the French cuisine. And yes, prawns were every present and also the go-to if you didn’t recognise some of the other food on the table.

I loved it, but it was a bit much for top sportsmen to be expected to eat such rich food all the time and to stand around socialising when they should be resting. These days the Boks have prepared diets and even dieticians to help them, but in those days they just ate what the hotel dished up - and some of those hotels were both situated in backwaters and operated on backwater standards.

So I could understand why the Boks used to prevail upon television reporter David van der Sandt, who had the use of a hired combi, to take them off to the nearest MacDonalds to top up. MacDonalds? I know. But it was still the amateur days.

IF THERE’S AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT, SO BE IT

One of the abiding memories of that trip was of the Boks coming back to the hotel in a belligerent mood after leaving one of the several functions earlier than the hosts intended them to. I can’t remember who was hosting, but the Boks apparently just had had enough of it and decided to walk out, with the management leading the way.

Dan Retief, the most senior of the SA rugby writers, asked the team manager Abe Malan if it was the right thing to do. Of course, it wasn’t. And there was talk of it being an international incident. But Abe had clearly had it up to his neck with the frustration and, while taking off his watch which momentarily had Dan wondering if he might get punched, he just said: “If there is going to be an international incident, then so be it.”

Later in the tour Naas, when asked by a local media person what he most enjoyed about France, responded: “Leaving it.”

So the Boks were a happy group when they headed across the English Channel for the two weeks in England that concluded that trip.

MONSIEUR, WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US?


Mention of Dan reminded me of a taxi ride back to the hotel on the eve of the first test of that tour at Stade Gerland in Lyon. I think we’d been celebrating my birthday, with my birthday (15 October) often coinciding with overseas trips in those days, and it had been a good night, but Dan and I were eager to get back to the hotel as we had a big game to cover the next day.

For some bizarre reason we ended up sharing the taxi with a Kiwi, who was confounded that myself and Dan thought France was going to win the game the next day. There was good reason for that - apart from a game in Marseille where the Boks drew inspiration from a massive brawl that broke out, and in which the aforementioned Steve Atherton endeared himself to his teammates and apparently also his coach, the late Prof John Williams, with his punching power, the tourists had been pretty hopeless.

But as the Kiwi reminded us, “Your lot do usually beat France”. Which of course in those days they did. And generally they have, with the Boks having won 28 of the 46 games played until this point and France just 12.

We had quite an argument with that New Zealander, and he ended up being proven right, with Naas playing an absolute blinder, with some help from his sharp scrumhalf partner Garth Wright, in South Africa’s first win of the post-isolation era.

The argument quickly became secondary when we realised that while we had no clue where the hotel was, the taxi driver had even less clue.

Dan liked trying out his French, but that night all I can remember him saying over and over again was: “Monsieur, where are you taking us? Monsieur, where are you taking us?” He must have taken us somewhere okay because we are both still here.

THE JAMES JOYCE

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating - the most memorable night ever for the Boks in France was at the James Joyce pub opposite their regular Paris hotel of those days, the Concorde Lafayette, in 1997. It was the day the Boks under Nick Mallett thrashed France 52-10, with Rassie being one of the star players in what was supposed to be an emotional occasion for the French as it was the last game they were playing with Parc des Princes as their headquarters.

Anyway, the celebration that night was legendary, for journalists who were there, the players, and for someone I knew from Durban who thought James Joyce would be a good place to take off all his clothes. I won’t mention his name because he happens to be the father of a young rugby player who I reckon is going to make it big and I wouldn’t want his, meaning the player's reputation sullied by mention of what his dad did eons ago.

The most memorable aspect of the game itself was how the French turned on their own, and celebrated the Boks, once the South African team had momentum. The Boks did a lap of honour afterwards - the French crowd!

Any chance of that happening on Saturday? Highly unlikely given the temperature generated by the French memories of what happened on my 58th birthday in 2023 - yup, 15 October 2023 won’t be forgotten in a hurry by the French and I doubt they are hosting the Boks to prawn parties on this trip.

ADRIFT ON THE ROADS

Deneys Reitz wrote a memorable book about his experiences during the Boer War called ‘Adrift on the Open Veld’, and if you read it one of the things that is astounding is the distances he covered. Mostly on horseback, of course.

I am just back from a road journey that might have covered much of the area that Reitz did, and it was exhaustion from travelling on a trip bookended by two rugby matches in Durban that was responsible for this column not appearing last week.

I could easily write a book called ‘Adrift on the SA Roads’, and unlike Reitz I didn’t have to shoot anyone to gain access to the parts of the country I visited. In a nutshell, if such a thing is possible, the journey went from Cape Town to Bloemfontein on the first day, Bloemfontein to Durban on the second, I covered the Bok/Argentina game at Kings Park on the third, and then it was off to Mkuze in northern Zululand for a few days of camping, followed by access to Kruger National Park through Komatipoort and Crocodile Bridge via Swaziland, and then…

Actually, I am getting a bit tired spelling it out. Let’s just say I am back in Cape Town now, with the second rugby match being the Sharks’ squeaky 29-19 win over Scarlets that was played out with the Sword of Damocles hanging over coach John Plumtree’s head.

Here’s a funny thing about my trip - when I left Cape Town the English soccer team I support, Liverpool, were top of the Premier League and hadn’t lost a match. In the time I was way they lost four Premier League games, one Champions League game and also a Carabao Cup fixture. That’ six games, and just one win in that period.

Since I have been home, they’ve beaten Aston Villa in the league and now Real Madrid, the giants of Europe, in the Champions League. It looks like if I want to help Liverpool I need to stop travelling and just stay at home.

However, the converse is true for the Stormers, who when I left Cape Town I thought might have a tough start to their URC season as they were starting against the champions, Leinster.

As it turned out I watched them thump Leinster on the television in the Lookout Bar and Restaurant in Glenashley the night before the Argentina game, the Ospreys at my timeshare at Kruger Gate, Scarlets and Zebre from the Drakensberg, where I celebrated my 60th, and then Montpellier in Durban after the aforementioned Sharks game.

The message from that? If John Dobson wants to win the URC he needs to send me money so I can stay on the road…

A WEIRD STATEMENT THAT ‘SORT OF’ SAID NOTHING

The other John, Plumtree, won’t though. He’s gone through a harrowing time and this is probably an opportune moment to comment on the press release around his future that was released by the Sharks the day after I got home.

Actually, it won’t take long - if ever there was an indicator that there might be a vacuum of leadership at the Sharks that is responsible for their travails it was that release, which was full of contradictions.

Think about what it said - we completely back our coach, but will replace him at the end of the season; after that we will employ him to mentor a new coach. So is he good enough and you really back him or don’t you? As someone said to me at the time, it looks like “the Sharks have sort of sacked John Plumtree”.

And “sort of” doing things is what has kept the Sharks back. Like the day the previous CEO “sort of” took the power of his head coach Sean Everitt away by “sort of” employing Neil Powell as director of rugby. The day they stop “sort of” doing things is the day that franchise might start heading towards the success they dream about.

Let me be clear, I think Plumtree has an impossible job and I argued for him to be given more power by removing some of the grey area he inhabited while there was a director of rugby in position and also, for goodness sake, remove the communication blockage there appears to be between coach and recruitment department.

My idea was that Plumtree should be put in a proper leadership position where he could make his own coaching appointments. So it did surprise me when I heard he had fought for the retention of his assistant coaches.

There are lots of good reasons that the Sharks have struggled that are away from coaching, but it is also clear that from a rugby viewpoint there are too many aspects of their game that just aren’t working. Some kind of meaningful change was necessary and if I was running the Sharks I would have shown at least one of the assistant coaches the door.

Which to be fair is what I think the Sharks bosses did want.