It’s only two years since South Africa last played Wales but it seems like a lifetime. Then, as now, the Springboks played the first two games of the season in Bloemfontein and Cape Town and, perhaps more pertinently, they were also looking ahead to a brave new world under a new coach.
Thanks to the implosion of 2003 it is conveniently forgotten that the first few months of Rudolf Straeuli’s stewardship of the Springboks held rich promise.
South Africa scored hatfuls of tries in the Tri Nations, many of them spectacular in both conception and execution. It was only when forced on the annual end of season route march around Europe — without a dozen first-choice players — that the wheels began to fall off.
Two coaches earlier the wheels had started to wobble against Wales. It was 1999 and the Boks had agreed to test the Millennium stadium, the almost complete venue for the World Cup final to be held later that year. Nick Mallett was the coach under whom South Africa had lost just once in 20 games, a sequence that included this country’s one and only Tri-Nations title.
It should have been a triumphal mid-season march through Cardiff. The Springboks had never lost to Wales and in Gary Teichmann they had the most respected leader in world rugby. But in a World Cup year, Mallett decided that Teichmann was past his sell-by date and in the build up to the game yet another row about quotas emerged.
The cracks were already showing when SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer marched into the dressing room and laid down the law around transformation to the players. When they finally took the field their play resembled the stadium itself — not quite ready.
Wales won an historic encounter 29-19, which was something of a turnaround, given that when the two sides had met in Pretoria 12 months earlier the Boks had won 96-13. Inevitably it is the latter encounter that has been regularly recalled ahead of this week’s Loftus Test, but Jake White would be wise to dust off the tape of the former to help focus the minds of his young side.
The coach will inevitably show the tapes of Wales’ past two Tests, a 1-1 series draw in Buenos Aires. Therein he will see that Wales are a Jekyll and Hyde side, with brilliant backs ill-served by a rickety tight five. Given that the Boks beat Ireland, thanks largely to two of the best forward displays of the new millennium, the path to victory might seem obvious, but great packs are measured on marathons, not sprints.
Upon that theme, there is one member of the Welsh tight five who will not need to be reminded what South African forwards are capable of. Lock Gareth Llewellyn is 35 and has been playing Test rugby since 1989, the year he made his debut as a 20 year old against New Zealand.
Llewellyn was already a 25-Test veteran when he captained Neath against the Springboks in the infamous ‘Jol at the Gnoll†in 1994. Kitch Christie’s side were not the first to arrive in Britain with a reputation for over robust play, while Neath had battled it out for years with Pontypool for the title of the dirtiest team in Wales.
For anyone not actually interested in rugby it was a marriage made in heaven, an 80-minute fight during which the odd game of rugby broke out. At one stage there were 28 players skirmishing simultaneously, and James Dalton ran virtually the length of the field to jump on Andrew Kembery, a two metre tall giant who looked like Gulliver on Lilliput with ‘Bullet†wrapped round his neck.
The only Springbok non-combatant was Andre Joubert, who stood beneath the press box with a bemused look on his face, wondering what had happened to the game he loved.
After the match a hasty press conference was called in the now-empty main stand during which the question was asked of Llewellyn as to whether he had ever played in a more brutal game. He replied, ‘Oh yes. Quite a few, actually.†A few weeks later South Africa beat Wales 20-12 in Cardiff, by which time it had become clear that they were not a dirty side, but a richly talented one.
Fast forward to the present day.
The Springboks are emerging from a period that will be remembered for kicks, bites and punches, when the game itself often seemed as far away as it did on that bleak November evening in Neath. Back-to-back wins against Ireland have repaired some of the damage to the team’s reputation, but White knows better than anyone that there is an awfully long way to go.
The coach has resisted the temptation to replace the injured Jacque Fourie with Gaffie du Toit on the left wing, relying instead on the maverick genius of Brent Russell. He has replaced Eddie Andrews at tight head with Faan Rautenbach, a move that would be easy to criticise were it not for the fact that White’s faith in certain experienced players was so spectacularly vindicated at Newlands.
The selection of Percy Montgomery may not have been one that commanded any kind of view from the moral high ground, but the fullback’s 51st Test may just have been his best ever. Slowly but surely White appears to be building a team that the nation can be proud of again.