Two years ago Jake White’s Springboks arrived in Dublin as the holders of the Tri-Nations Trophy. They were in the second week of the so-called ”Grand Slam Tour” having narrowly beaten Wales at the Millennium stadium a week previously.
The result may have favoured the Boks more had White not believed the stadium clock that read two minutes to go.
Accordingly he cleared his bench only to discover that were in fact 10 minutes to go. Wales scored two tries in that time and were pressing for the winning score at the final whistle.
So the Boks came to Dublin bloodied, but unbowed, and with the honour of being the last side to play Ireland at the old Lansdowne Road, before it was demolished to make way for a new state-of-the-art behemoth.
The last time the Boks had closed a stadium was in Paris in 1997 when Nick Mallett’s team put 50 points on France at Parc des Princes in the finest display of total rugby since readmission.
So, despite the last 10 minutes of the previous week South Africa had every reason to be confident going into the second Test of the tour. Alas, they reckoned without Paul Honiss.
The New Zealander whistled the Boks out of the game. The nadir actually arrived as early as the 20th minute, when Honiss lectured John Smit about repeat infringements and instructed him to talk to his men. Smit turned his back to do just that, Honiss blew ”time-on” and Irish flyhalf Ronan O’Gara sauntered over for the only try of the game, unopposed.
The normally sanguine Os du Randt, one of the Boks who had had his hands on his knees listening to the captain’s lecture when Honiss blew, was purple in the face as he confronted the hapless referee. Perhaps the experienced prop knew how important the try would be: Ireland won 17-12.
To add insult to injury, Lansdowne Road did not close down and remains today much as it was in 1912, when Billy Millar’s Boks put 10 tries on Ireland in a 38-0 victory.
Two years after the Grand Slam dream came crashing down, Du Randt is one of several first choice players who will be watching the game on television at home in South Africa. White has taken a calculated risk to give his stars a rest before the 2007 season begins, mindful that the World Cup is now less that a year away.
It is a laudable plan that provides a sobering statistic: only Smit remains from that 2005 defeat in the run-on side for this week’s fixture. The upside of that statistic is that few of Smit’s charges know what it is like to lose to Ireland and it is worth remembering that the latter have beaten the Boks just twice in the space of 100 years.
This week the Irish have to cope with the tag of favourites, despite losing all three of their summer Tests in New Zealand and Australia. The last time they began a game as favourites against the Boks was in Bloemfontein on June 12 2004, White’s first Test in charge. South Africa ran in three second-half tries to win 31-17, an auspicious start to a new era.
Two and a half years ago, when that game was played, Bevan Fortuin was playing for the Eagles in George. It would be almost a year later that he left the town of his birth to campaign with the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein. Now he has played in two Currie Cup finals and sped past a host of candidates to nail down the fullback berth in Saturday’s team.
Apart from proving that it is easier to get selected for the national side if you play for a successful team, Fortuin’s selection is important. It proves once again that a poor kid from a township (Blanco, in Fortuin’s case) can play for his country. This is the Springbok dream that for the first 85 years of the emblem’s history was reserved for those born with white skin.
Fortuin will not let the side down and may in fact prove to be an inspired selection if the usual soft conditions prevail in Dublin.
The other new caps are both on the wing. It would be easy to say that White has got confused by picking a centre, Jaco Pretorius, on the wing, and a wing, Bryan Habana, in the centre, but it is not as simple as that. Habana made his name as an outside centre and, under the mentorship of Loffie Eloff, studied the play of Brian O’Driscoll, the best in the world.
On Saturday the two men will face each other, each wearing the number 13. That is something to relish and while there may be weaknesses in this particular Bok side it will not lack flair. When was the last time you could say that of the old leaping antelope?