The Bulls concluded the final season of Super 14 rugby by claiming their third title. In the end their greater familiarity with the pressure that winning on a regular basis brings carried them through against a game but outmuscled Stormers team.
The two franchises have earned a rest for their principal stars, so the Springbok team to play Wales in Cardiff this weekend is a mix and match amalgam of overseas-based players, local tyros and a hard core of Springbok regulars, including the captain John Smit. Next week in Cape Town the visiting French team will face something much closer to a full strength side.
Making history
Which is ironic since the match that this Saturday’s game commemorates marked the moment when Springbok coaches were forced to accept a broader view. On June 26 1999 Rian Oberholzer, the then CEO of the South African Rugby Football Union, joined the players and management in the Springbok dressing room a few hours before kickoff.
In the wake of a growing political storm back home, Oberholzer had flown in to reiterate the union’s views on the need for transformation. Coach Nick Mallett’s remarkable record — 18 wins from 19 games — was swept aside. This would be the last time, said Oberholzer, that an all-white Springbok team would take the field.
And, as it turned out, history was indeed made that day. It marked the opening of the Millennium Stadium, the Welsh Rugby Union’s (WRU) new headquarters, and that’s the ostensible reason for this week’s test match. The WRU had hoped to sell the Arms Park, its long-time home in central Cardiff, and relocate to a new stadium on Tiger Bay but the expected lottery funding failed to materialise and so a new plan had to be made.
The Arms Park was reconfigured, but with time running out ahead of the World Cup, the Springboks as the reigning world champions were persuaded to play in a building site to check the readiness of the new stadium.
Men in hard hats and the cranes they were operating stopped work to watch the game and what they saw justified everything the WRU had sacrificed to attract the World Cup final to Cardiff. Wales, with kicking maestro Neil Jenkins to the fore, beat South Africa for the first time in their history.
High expectations
There is little reason to suppose that even an under strength Springbok side will emulate its 1999 predecessor by losing in Cardiff this week. The Welsh are out of season and there are more than enough Springboks with points to prove to ensure no complacency.
New caps Francois Louw and Gio Aplon are the beneficiaries of the Stormers’ fine season, while Joe van Niekerk returns after opting to see out his remaining days in France. It’s unfair to brand him, but in some ways Big Joe is a throwback to the bad old days. He was at eighthman on the Boks’ disastrous European tour in 2002 which ended with a 53-3 defeat by England at Twickenham.
Equally, Springbok coach Peter de Villiers will try to block out the last time he made radical experiments with his team and lost convincingly the final test to the British and Irish Lions at Ellis Park last year. It was thought, then as now, that the strength in depth of South African rugby was sufficient to ensure a positive result with what amounted to a second team.
And so John Smit leads out a side on something of a hiding to nothing. But just as the 1999 game was a turning point in the local game, history may record the 2010 version in similar vein. Then it was about race, now it is about in which hemisphere you choose to play your club and provincial rugby.
The time is coming when Springbok teams will be chosen from the best available players, whatever colour they may be. On that day the rest of the world had better watch out.