Fans quick to turn on the Boks reveal more about themselves than the team, despite historic triumphs.
Springbok rugby has done so much to transform itself into an object of international wonder and deep domestic pride, but some of their fans who profess to adore them don’t always do the team justice.
The last couple of the weeks in the Rugby Championship – and especially the past two weekends in New Zealand – have been as good a snapshot as ever.
A new playing style and a rare loss to Australia at Ellis Park started the rot.
A return to basics with a conservative team yielded a very narrow loss to All Blacks at the citadel of New Zealand rugby 10 days ago and unleashed a concomitant gnashing of teeth and rending of hair among ostensible fans and self-appointed commentators, many of whom are experts by sole virtue of having played seventh XV rugby in their final year at high school decades before.
But it was nothing compared the vitriolic consternation following Rassie Erasmus’ announcement of his team last Monday, earlier than normal and a selection that seemed to point in the opposite direction: untested combinations, underexposed players in key positions and a critical bomb squad likely to explode – according to them – in South Africa’s faces.
It’s difficult reading some of the posts to realise that the team these people were speaking about – and the coaching staff – is possibly the best team in Springbok history, on the threshold of an unheralded global epoch.
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And so it came to pass on Saturday.
If you didn’t watch the game, read the reports – or go onto social media – the SparkNotes are that the Boks handed the All Blacks their heaviest defeat yet – and at home, nogal.
Cue all the celebrations, in particular from people who have left South Africa but always manage to dust off their patriotism from the recesses of their wardrobes.
There is nothing wrong with that at all, there is nothing wrong with having an opinion either and being passionate, whether you are jumping on, or off, the bandwagon.
But posts, especially when the team/country/institution isn’t doing so well, invariably tell the world far more about the person writing them and their inherent biases – and bigotry – than they might actually be comfortable sharing when called out on it.
The irony of free speech, over and above the intolerance of those who claim it for themselves and no-one else, is that it isn’t free at all.
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