The Springboks have a chance to end their tour on a high note against the Barbarians
Andy Capostagno
And so the tour looks likely to end with more questions than answers. Before it began we knew that Argentina, Ireland and Wales were all vulnerable and that England at Twickenham presented the only major obstacle among the Tests. What we didn’t know was exactly how moribund the Springbok game plan would become after just over a month of playing, eating and sleeping rugby.
Many people have wondered why Harry Viljoen banned the kick from his team’s repertoire against the Pumas. After Saturday’s display at Twickenham we have the answer: he knew how bad tactical kicking could lose a game far more comprehensively than merely being caught behind your own 22 with ball in hand.
It has been said before; it is not a crime to kick a rugby ball. It is, however, a crime to kick a rugby ball straight down the throats of gleeful defenders for an hour and a half. There were probably more “tactical” kicks attempted by the Springboks on Saturday than there have been in the 11 previous Tests they have played this year, and you could have counted the good ones on the fingers of one hand.
And yet, even a team so profligate with hard-won possession could have won the game if Percy Montgomery’s try had been awarded and if Japie Mulder’s temporary absence in the blood bin had not opened up the defence like a can of beans for Will Greenwood to dance through.
There is no doubt that the tour should have ended last week, but the lure of R70 000 a head will keep the players in Britain for another week and a third visit to the Millennium stadium in Cardiff. This time the team lying in wait is the Barbarians, led by Lawrence Dallaglio.
Any resemblance between this match and the famous 1973 encounter between the Baabaas and the All Blacks will be entirely coincidental, however. For club commitments have denied the selectors most of the cream of British players, the Arms Park is now a concrete walkway and the Barbarians have gone corporate.
The Baabaas used to meet on a Thursday, train on a Friday and play on a Saturday. They used to throw the ball about with gay abandon and the selectors used to include at least one uncapped player who had either been hard done by or was on his way to stardom.
Those traditions have gone, replaced by an acquisitive sponsor who provides an apparently limitless number of airfares, generous match fees and first-class accommodation. Hence the number of southern hemisphere faces who now appear in the famous black and white shirts.
It will be the fifth fixture between the Boks and the Baabaas and the scoreline currently stands at two all. In 1952 and 1970 the Boks won handsomely, but in 1961 they had gone unbeaten through Britain and Ireland in 29 matches, only to lose the Springbok head in Cardiff.
The Baabaas won 6-0, a scoreline that would betoken a dreadful kicking duel today, but in 1961 meant two (unconverted) tries, for the second of which I should declare a certain interest: it was by my father-in-law, WGD (Derek) Morgan.
According to the president of the Baabaas, Micky Steele-Bodger, the presentation of the head caused a problem because the side is a club without a clubhouse. The trophy now spends six months in the Penarth Rugby Club and six months in the Glamorganshire Golf Club.
Another 33 years were to elapse before the two sides met again, in Dublin in 1994. The game and South Africa had undergone enormous changes in the interim, but Steele-Bodger was still the president of the Baabaas and Jannie Engelbrecht, wing in 1961, was back as manager of the Boks.
In true Barbarians tradition the post-match function went on rather a long time before the speeches began, a fact which may have affected Engelbrecht’s delivery, normally as fluent as his running style at the height of his career. He began his reply: “Thanks very much to Sticky Meele-Bodger…” and it went downhill from there.
But if that was the lowest point of the public relations on that tour then it stands in stark contrast to this year’s version, where the president and CEO of the South African Rugby Football Union, Silas Nkanunu and Rian Oberholzer, failed to turn up at all at Twickenham last week.
Maybe they’ll be in Cardiff this week, then again maybe they’ll remember that the Boks lost to the Baabaas in Dublin the last time they played. In that match it was the Boks under Kitch Christie who were told to express themselves and the Baabaas who were told to win.
Chester Williams is one of four Bok survivors from that defeat. Is it too much to ask, in what will almost certainly be his final game in the green and gold, that the Boks put on a display in his honour? Show us the kind of rugby that will remind us all of the days before deluded game plans and fullbacks playing flyhalf, when the Springboks were world champions and entertainers, nogal.