Andy Capostagno : Rugby
There is a lot to be said for relaxation. In the next millennium we are told that working hours will shrink to about 30 a week so we’ll all have to get used to more time at home, more time on the golf course, more time.
But rugby events on opposite sides of the globe suggest that South Africans are beginning to get the hang of this relaxation thing already.
I spoke to a New Zealand radio station on Monday where the host was genuinely amazed at the Springbok build up to the test against the All Blacks in Wellington.
“They were so relaxed!”, he said. “Johan Erasmus came into the station for a five minute chat and stayed for an hour answering listeners calls. Gary Teichmann was cracking jokes when I interviewed him! I couldn’t get a word out of the All Blacks, they were all so focused on training they didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
This would be the same All Black side who were a media man’s dream a year ago. Polite, prompt and politically correct. This would be the same All Black side who, at the end of press conferences would convene an exclusive meeting of the Kiwi press and tell them the real story, so that the press became just one more weapon in their armoury, a travelling circus of hagiographers.
I’m sorry if this sounds like I’m rubbing it in, but the All Blacks have got away with it for so long that it feels good to have a little fun at their expense.
And after all, fun was exactly what the Springboks had at Athletic Park, although they may not have realised it until they were safely in the dressing room contemplating a first South African win in New Zealand for 17 years.
Fun and relaxation go together and that is what Nick Mallett has brought to the side.
It was interesting to hear Krynauw Otto say that he felt his game had improved because he didn’t feel the need to prove himself to the coach every time he ran on to the field.
What he is talking about is consistency of selection. The kind of consistency that allows Pieter Rossouw to under-perform for five test matches because when it really counted he had a blinder and scored the winning try.
The kind of consistency that allows the limited talents of Pieter Muller to win the man of the match award for tackling the All Black mid-field into oblivion. I have been trying to get Muller out of the team for a month or more, but I would not have traded him with anyone on Saturday.
So the Boks were relaxed and they won the game, now they can enjoy a week off before the serious stuff starts again. After all, a good side can beat the All Blacks once in a while, this team needs to do it twice, a fact that Mallett has not been slow to recognise.
Relaxation, like manna, tends to come down from above.
In the bad old days, the president of the South African Rugby Football Union would have been in Wellington last week guiding the hand of the coach, suggesting team changes, generally being a bloody nuisance.
In the absence of a president, Mallett was left alone to pick his own team, something that was never an option for Ian McIntosh on the 1994 Bok tour to New Zealand.
Sarfu will have a new president by the end of August. He will be Silas Nkanunu, the man who chaired the body’s extraordinary general meeting in Cape Town this week.
At that meeting five amendments to the constitution were voted on and accepted, a fact which appalled the ex-president, Louis Luyt, who said that the meeting had no standing and that we would all have to wait for the annual general meeting in November for the changes to be voted upon.
Luyt may yet have the final say on the matter. In his position as president of the Golden Lions Rugby Union, he has 30 days to appeal against the implementation of the changes. He asked Sarfu to hold back for that period of time or at least until Mr Justice William de Villiers makes clear his reasons for overturning the government appointed Browde commission of inquiry into rugby.
At which time, no doubt, we will also finally discover what the last Neanderthal said to the first Cro-Magnon.
What Luyt does not want to accept is that these kind of delaying tactics no longer work. Almost all the delegates at the meeting shared a common power. They weren’t scared any more. Bully boy tactics have worked in South African rugby for almost 100 years, but no longer.
Luyt may be right, Sarfu might have signed away its power by reducing the size of its executive to seven with four more co-opted from recommendations made by the National Sports Council.
But who actually cares anymore? Six months ago the Sarfu extra-ordinary general meeting would have been front page news. It might even have made CNN. Now it is reported, but conservatively so.
There are two reasons for this. One is that the national side is winning and, whatever administrators may feel personally, that is the greatest panacea of all.
The other is that Luyt is no longer breathing down everyone’s necks. The players are relaxed because the coach is relaxed, the coach is relaxed because the administrators are relaxed, the administrators are relaxed because Luyt has resigned.
There is, as I think I have mentioned before, a lot to be said for relaxation.