>From the despair of a series defeat against New Zealand to the joy of an undefeated away tour, can South African rugby continue with its present management
Rugby: Jon Swift
this has been a year of personalities in rugby … the almost gloating shadow of Louis Luyt … the glowering countenance of Andre Markgraaff … the unmannered mishandling of the axing of Francois Pienaar … evergreen brilliance of Andre Joubert … the bulky behemoth Kobus Wiese … the somewhat forced nature of the departure from the game of Morne du Plessis.
It is perhaps germane, with the British Lions arriving in this country for the first time since Billy Beaumont’s side in 1980 and Derek Quinnell’s cynical sneak punch on Morne du Plessis, to look back before looking forward to a series which will surely be the most important in at least a decade to Springbok rugby.
To do this, it is necessary to look to the man individually and to discuss his contribution towards the vision of building a side towards the 1999 World Cup defence in Wales.
Of Luyt, there is little reportable, bar his avowed detestation of rugby writer Dan Retief. “I know him, I don’t like him and I don’t trust him,” the president of the windowless concrete monolith that is the South African Rugby Football Union, said of one of the game’s more respected critics.
It could be said that the reverse applies in spades. Retief can be a singularly difficult man when he has the whiff of a story in his nostrils. Yet he remains a man to know, a person to like and — above all — one to trust. Money, so the old saying goes, can buy neither discernment nor taste. It also obviously cannot buy much credibility in the media.
But above all Luyt’s likes and dislikes looms the way he forced through the appointment Andre Markgraaff, as national coach. It must be said though that the full story of how Markgraaff took over from Kitch Christie will probably never be told.
Luyt erred — as he has so often done in the past — by distancing himself from what was going on around him in public. It is hard to believe that a doer who has rebuilt the fortunes of both Transvaal and South African rugby allows a blind mandate to those around him.
The bully boy tactics employed to the beat off the challenge of Brian van Rooyen as president of the Transvaal union is a case in point. When it matters to Luyt he comes out with the brass knuckles anchored to each fist. Van Rooyen was badly bruised but has vowed that the battle is not yet over. The developments do not promise to be pretty but they augur a fight worthy of the welfare of the game.
And as Luyt retired into an almost hermit-like reclusivity, Markgraaff, or so it would it would seem from the dispatches which have gradually reformed him from hyena status to that of a rottweiler on a long leash during the three-nation Springbok tour, took most of the headlines.
Markgraaff and Pienaar will be inexorably linked for one of the most bizarre sackings of a Springbok captain since Salty du Randt lost South Africa’s mantle by decking Ian Pickard in a hotel passage.
Pienaar must have known what was coming when, after having to leave the field against the All Blacks, he arrived back from medical attention to find Luyt and Markgraaff congratulating Gary Teichmann in the dressing room. Legend will have it that neither of the officials even asked how Pienaar was. But then that is surely one of those legends that will retire to the books on the impossibility of urban integrity.
It is credit to Teichmann that he has done such a fine job and carried on the Pienaar tradition so well.
Ahead of him lie the British Lions and yet another tri-nation series. It will be a test of his resolve to live within what many perceive as a diseased system and soldier on or ultimately take the trekpass and travel the way of notable discards Pienaar, Joel Stransky and Steve Atherton.
The Lions, selected as they are from the cream of British rugby and coming from a pool of around 80 test-hardened veterans, must be almost as monumental a task as facing down the All Blacks.
Especially Willie John-Mac-bride’s 1974 pride who so severely savaged both this country’s players and its rugby tradition, by taking a 3-0 series win and not dropping a game on tour.
It is not overstating the case that, while rugby remains rooted in the Southern hemisphere, four nations playing as one in the age of professionalism are dismissed only by the foolhardy.
One feels that again the veterans will be called upon to hold the sagging staff which holds our international standards as world champions.
In this respect, you have to single out Joubert who has made the fullback slot something of wonder rather than a trench to dig the last line of defence into.
Surely, there can be few players who can boast of a season that glitters even in defeat, and yet the poker-faced Natalian has managed to do so.
When all else has failed in impetus and imagination, somehow Joubert has managed to lift the side from the crushingly boring — or even at times the embarrassingly mediocre — into an entity of esteem and a side eminently worth watching. This is from the the depths of no vision but his own.
Wiese too has been something special. A man of almost fearsome bulk, is one of the great forwards of the year.
He has come back from injuries which have dogged his up-and-down career to take the physical stuff and the ball to the opponents.
But all that said, the fact remains that rugby looks healthy on the surface as indeed it should after such a run of victories following such a train of abject defeats.
But can the game allow men like Pienaar and Stransky to defect to the professional game of sterling-based contracts? Can the game allow men of the stature of Morne du Plessis to fade into the sunset? The easy answer is no.
Cardiff and the World Cup are still some years distant. We thank the powers above that this is so. There is some work to do before then.