TV Review
The Rugby World Cup was a victory for the Japanese hosts and a united South Africa.
Diana Wichtel
It was a little bit sad. It could have been the All Blacks in their dressing room, in their triumph, in their undies, spraying each other with beer in the presence of royalty. Instead, it was South Africa’s François Steyn urging Prince Harry to chug his beer like a boss. Harry gestured at the camera, as always in his face, and limited himself to a discreet celebratory sip. It was quite a scene. As inexplicably persistent British media person Piers Morgan tweeted, “The final indignity for England – Faf de Klerk clutching the World Cup in his Springbok speedos.”
The All Blacks looked positively perky about third place in comparison to the dark dejection of England. Some of that team expressed their thoughts about being beaten by South Africa by refusing to put on their silver medals or by taking them straight off again. Referee Jérôme Garcès collected his medal to boos from disgruntled England supporters.
The hosts deserved better. This Rugby World Cup, the first to be held in Asia, always felt a bit different. There might have been a smile at one time at a rugby team called the Brave Blossoms. Not any more. As one commentator put it, “Japan, the most gracious, humble hosts, set this tournament on fire.” The visiting teams were cheered as if they were at home and repaid the welcome by picking up such lovely local customs as bowing to the crowd at the end of a match. Japan did it all in the face of the disaster and tragedy brought by Typhoon Hagibis. “They’ve given everything they had,” said All Blacks coach Steve Hansen. “They’re a huge success story of the tournament.”
Still. We thrashed South Africa. England thrashed us. The immediate post-mortems amounted to a unanimous WTF? England coach Eddie Jones: “You can have the most investigative debrief of your game and you still don’t know what was wrong.” Buck Shelford’s expert opinion to NZME: “They just didn’t play that well.” And 2003 World Cup winner with England, Steve Thompson: “At times it looked men against boys.” Ouch.
It’s all so random. That’s possibly why sport can prove so addictive: intermittent reinforcement. You win, you win, you win, then you don’t. Skill, culture, money, any number of Barretts – whatever you throw at it, it’s always a gamble.
The joy of South Africa. Cue multicultural mad scenes at the fan zone in Johannesburg: “A country united, totally. Go bokke!”; “What a game! Amabokoboko!” The 1995 squad had one black player. This one had 12.
Coach Rassie Erasmus was asked about the pressure the team must have been under. “In South Africa, pressure is not having a job, or if one of your close relatives is murdered,” he said. “We have a privilege of giving hope – it’s not a burden.”
The team’s captain, Siya Kolisi, is the first black captain of a cup-winning side. He was there against unbelievable odds. “When you were a young boy, did you ever think, in your wildest dreams, about a day like today?” he was asked. “No,” he said. “When I was a kid, all I was thinking about was getting my next meal.”
His speech departed radically from the code’s normal sportspeak conventions by being moving and meaningful. “We have so many problems in our country but to have a team like this …” he said. “We come from different backgrounds, different races and we came together with one goal and we wanted to achieve it. I really hope we’ve done that for South Africa, to show that we can pull together if we want to and achieve something.”
This tournament took an unconvincing cliché – it’s not all about winning – and gave it some heft. As for us, as that ancient boomer ditty once observed, you can’t always get what you want. But sometimes, things still work out fine.
The tournament took an unconvincing cliché – it’s not all about winning – and gave it some heft.