Game plan: Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber (back) and South African Rugby Union director Rassie Erasmus should let the leashes off the players. Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images
New Zealand should win this weekend’s Rugby World Cup final. The odds stacked against South Africa — especially the pressure — are too large to overcome. We could win if the Springboks are liberated from the responsibility of being the solution to South Africa’s problems, and allowed to be free to express their love of the game on the field.
A number of references have been made to the 2019 and 1995 World Cup tournaments. The 1995 edition is still remembered because South Africa hosted the tournament just after the demise of apartheid and global hero Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratic president, wore the number six Springbok shirt even though the Springbok was closely associated with apartheid and its racism.
The story was so huge that, decades later, Hollywood made a movie about it, called Invictus.
During the 2019 World Cup, the Chasing the Sun documentary, which followed the Boks, was made. Viewers got to see footage of their team talks and how the coach, Johan “Rassie” Erasmus, moulded the players of diverse backgrounds into a united team.
The Springboks were successful in both these tournaments because they were said to be fighting for something bigger than a rugby game.
In 2019, Rassie was able to get the players to ignore the pressure and think of the game as pleasure. He reminded them that a rugby match was not pressure for most South Africans. Real pressure was felt by the millions of people who did not have the luxury of playing rugby for a living; their pressure was hustling for a job, fighting hunger and poverty, or mourning the murder of a loved one.
It rang true and the players responded, Lukanyo Am’s sublime pass to Makazole Mapimpi in the final revealed the lack of pressure the Boks felt. In that final, they were enjoying the physical battle and the freedom of running; they wanted to hold the ball and were not scared of losing.
But this 2023 Rugby World Cup edition is not the same.
The players are being put under too much pressure. Even when they win, they aren’t allowed to celebrate and be celebrated. Rassie, who is now the director of rugby at the South African Rugby Union, and Jacques Nienaber, the head coach, have the players too tightly wound up. The media is pushing an agenda, where our players have to answer questions that do not relate to the game.
We went into the tournament having to explain ad nauseam why we had seven forwards and one back on the substitutes’ bench in the warm-up against the All Blacks, when there are usually five or six forwards and two or three backs. The seven-one split meant that we could replace the entire scrum pack.
It has not become a passing discussion, such that instead of Ox Nche and Vincent Koch being hailed for scrumming the living daylights out of the English in the semi-finals, South Africa’s tactics are being questioned for using the substitutes’ bench unfairly.
Our very integrity is put into question. When our players were sent for head injury assessments in the game against France, it was suggested that we were deliberately using the HIA system to get rolling substitutions. And now after the semi-final victory against England, as we prepare for the final against the All Blacks, hooker and vice-captain Bongi Mbonambi is being investigated for an alleged racist slur directed at England player Tom Curry.
Our players and team have not been celebrated at any stage during this tournament. Instead there are a lot of backhanded compliments. For instance, the coaching innovation and genius of Rassie and Nienaber is described as cunning, as if they are crooks. And our physical prowess is made out to be that we are brutish dunderheads.
The problem is that unlike the previous tournament, when the pressure was lifted because we were playing for something greater than rugby, this time around it’s the opposite — we are feeling the pressure because this is greater than rugby. Our culture as a people and how we view the game is being negatively judged. Our success is said to be ugly for the sport.
On the other hand, the All Blacks are made out to be the good guys who can stop the bad and ugly Springboks. It’s made out that a Springbok win will mean a sombre day for the sport and rugby because a fair contest will be dead forever.
Our players have been feeling this pressure since the first day of this tournament and it has not let up, not for one brief moment. We are called bullies even when we essentially matched the Irish score against Romania.
The only way we can win the game against the All Blacks is for Rassie and Nienaber to take the leashes off the players in a similar way to the last World Cup warm-up game against New Zealand at Twickenham. Yes, New Zealand may have been a player down for most of that match, but we played without fear and used our midfield and backline players quite a lot. We allowed our creative players to express themselves.
The starting lineup forward pack for the Twickenham game and the one we have used in the current quarter- and semi-final games are the same. But the change was the starting midfield duo of André Esterhuizen and Canan Moodie in the Twickenham game. Both Nienaber and Rassie have to allow this team to express itself.
The shackles must be removed from our players. They must stop playing for the country. They are not the solution to our problems of racism, unemployment, poverty and inequality. And they certainly are not the answer to the insipid leadership we are forced to endure.
I want them to play for the joy of rugby: the underhand pass, the perfectly timed offload in the tackle, the maul attack off the lineout, and the grunt of the scrum pushing the opponent back and even the sweet sound a rugby ball makes with a perfectly executed drop kick.
And only then will we win this final. If it is a tense and cagey affair, the pressure our players have endured will be too much to bear. And I don’t think any South African supporter’s heart can bear another one-point screamer — unless we win, of course.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator.