En Passant: Rugby – what do I know?

LISTEN, I know nothing about rugby, nothing, zilch, boggerall. I haven’t played a game of rugby since I left school back in history, shortly after the rinderpest, and then I was pretty useless.

Although, you know, I did then captain the 4th XV, which was comprised of un-athletic lads, some lanky, some over-weight, post-pubescent boys, still coming to terms with facial hair, acne, rampant testosterone levels and Texan plain, and some still harbouring the deluded ambition to be promoted to the 3rd XV. Most of us were happy to be in any team where smoking in the scrum was not frowned upon. Managed correctly, when we went down for a scrum, we could pass around a smoke, lit by the flank, and each have two satisfying puffs before the scrum-half put the ball in.

Where was the refereeing teacher, you ask? Where was the teacher who was meant to be coaching us? Well, he would be sitting on a slatted bench on the side lines, puffing on a smoke of his own, and “controlling” the game with occasional blasts on a whistle as and when the mood struck him, and in between marking books. That way it saved him time – two birds with one stone, sort of thing.

Trust me, a teacher coaching the 1st team wanted to coach the 1st team; a teacher coaching the 4th team would rather be sitting in a pub with his mates, downing a couple of small ones from glasses beaded with condensation, and discussing the ample cleavage of the new biology teacher. He’d rather do that than pretend to be interested in a game played badly by a collection of uncoordinated and spotty teenagers reeking of Texan plain.

Then when I left school, when there was an occasional touring team we’d listen to the test broadcasts on hissing short-wave radio, and that was the only way too of following the Currie Cup competition. No, my child, in them days there was no television. I know that some blokes left school and still carried on playing rugby for their local towns’ clubs, but I didn’t.

What makes my knowledge of rugby even more distant today is the fact that I don’t have satellite television, and the SABC broadcasts about as much rugby on television as it does jukskei, which is to say boggerall. It is one of the mysteries of life that the authorities expect what is called “transformation” in rugby, and yet the national broadcaster doesn’t give that sport any real exposure.

You cannot expect the youth to aspire to playing rugby when all they see is soccer. And you can push transformation all you like, but if the desire to play is not evident in the first place, then you’re barking up the wrong horse in mid-stream.

Anyway, so I don’t know much about rugby, and when I hear the blokes in the Spoeg & Spittle airing their views about Heyneke Meyer or some aspect of the game, I generally keep quiet. I have opinions, among them that Wahl Bartman was one of the last true rugby players, and that I’d rather be hit by a runaway fully loaded timber truck than be tackled by Henry Honiball.

Another opinion – I think that one of the great pairings at lock were Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha, this despite the controversy of them re-emerging in the current Springbok line-up, and I reckon that André Joubert was truly the Rolls Royce of fullbacks.

I also think that the low point of South African rugby, the absolute sump, was the Camp Staaldraad under the then coach Rudolph Straeuli, which I think was an exercise almost verging on the perverted. I have never understood why grown men allowed themselves to be manipulated in that way. I would have told Rudolph to take his staaldraad, fold it in half then in half again, and then shove it up where the sun don’t shine.

Another low point in my view, was the celebrity era that we went through when suddenly professionalism created these “stars”, these players who suddenly, in months, had more money than Wahl Bartman earned during years of playing the game. Then, the emphasis seemed to be on Bobby Skinstad’s tongue piercing and stud, and on the colour of Percy Montgomery’s boots and his hairstyle than on the game of rugby. Great Scott, imagine Wahl Bartman with pink rugby boots!

Yeah, I’ve got opinions about rugby, and I’ll share another with you. I watched the game on Saturday between the Boks and the Aussies which we won 28-10. It was a truly a great game of rugby and not because we won. It was a game of attrition with the Australians leading 10-8 for most of the game. At one stage in the Bok attack there were an astonishing 29 phases. It was brutal, and you have to salute the defence of both teams.

And the difference in the end, the difference that gave us the 28-10 win, in my opinion ‘cos I know nothing about rugby, the difference was Pat Lambie who was brought on as a flyhalf substitute.

So I have to ask why Heyneke Meyer, the coach, continually consigns Lambie to long periods of idleness on the bench? But then, what do I know. I know nothing about rugby.