Andy Capostagno Rugby
In case anyone is still depressed about the showing of the young guns in Cardiff, there is further bad news: the golden oldies ain’t what they used to be, either.
Naas Botha took a team of former greats to the fourth Tusker Safari Sevens in Nairobi last week. Included were such luminaries as Uli Schmidt, Fafa Knoetze, Burger Geldenhuys, Divan Serfontein and Rob Louw. But time has no respect for reputation and they returned to South Africa on Monday bruised, bloodied and quite definitely bowed.
The problem for the Springboks in Cardiff was that they had selected a different team three weeks in a row and, when push came to illegal scrumming, couldn’t fall back upon the basics of teamwork. It was rather a different story for Naas’s Magnificent Seven: they couldn’t fall back upon the basics of teamwork because some hadn’t played in five years!
They were the recipients of last-minute phone calls from Botha, who had tried to persuade the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) to provide him with a development side for Kenya. When this failed, Botha did what all organisers of sports teams have done at one time or another: he called his mates.
Botha was appropriately bullish before the tournament began: “I know we’re a bunch of old guys in a youngsters’ tournament, but I want to tell you that if these kids want to get physical with Burger Geldenhuys and Thys Burger, they’re going to get taken out.”
In the end, though, Geldenhuys only lasted a half in each of SuperSport’s first two games before aggravating an old war wound and retiring to the bench. From there he offered bons mots such as, “This isn’t sevens, this is a brawl,” observing the dirty close-quarter play of his old Northerns buddy, Schmidt.
Assuming that a lot of old war wounds were going to flare up, I asked Dr Divan Serfontein whether he was doubling up as medic. He said, “It’ll either be me or Uli. Mind you … we probably need two doctors!” And so it proved. Serfontein, the old Western Province scrum-half, pulled a groin muscle in the second match and didn’t don combat fatigues again.
They lost three of their four pool games and that relegated them to second-day battle in the Plate competition, where they beat Seaxe, the Middlesex second team who were almost as long in the tooth as SuperSport. That set up a semi-final match against Pretoria Gardens, a team of intrepid wanderers from the B leagues of Pretoria. They had spent the previous week campaigning in the Lusaka Sevens and were somewhat stunned to be running out against the legends of South African rugby. The Pretorians lost 49-17, but their day was made by the post-match photograph as they posed with their heroes. Captain Chris Bartmann said, “This will teach those guys who stayed at home.”
Hopefully it will teach Sarfu a thing or two as well. No thanks to the union, which is charged with developing the game among players of colour, there were two South African teams in Nairobi, one paid for by sponsors, another by scrimping and saving.
It may interest Sarfu to know that Uganda won the Plate competition without a single pale male in sight. They beat pre- tournament favourites Zimbabwe 28-19 in the finals.
Zimbabwe were knocked out of the Tusker Trophy (the main competition) by Kenya after leading 15-0 with three minutes left. The Kenyans were inspired by a crowd of 8 000 to score three tries in three minutes. It was the kind of moment which lifts this tournament above the humdrum. Not that Sarfu cares.
Except that next year they may be forced to care. The International Rugby Board has decided to use the Safari Sevens as a qualifying tournament for the World Cup Sevens. If South Africa wishes to play in the World Cup, it needs to put aside its prejudices and send a truly representative side to Nairobi. Thus far Sarfu and South African rugby are the losers. For the record, this year’s winners in Nairobi were as follows: Tusker Trophy – Public School Wanderers (beat Bristol University Select 17-12 in the final); Guinness Plate – Uganda (beat Zimbabwe 28-19 in the final); Tusker Keg Trophy (Bowl) – Kenya Harlequins (beat SuperSport 33-31 in the final).