Between the white lines: writing about rugby
• The World Cup-winning Springboks, a coach’s autobiography and two nostalgic labours of love
Books about rugby, much like those who play the game, come in all shapes and sizes. There are histories, biographies, hagiographies, diaries, potboilers and even the occasional novel.
In 2008 Mills & Boon, publishers of bodice-rippers (no jockstrap jokes, please), commissioned a series of novels with a rugby theme, one of which was titled Nice Girls Finish Last, a double entendre so obvious it could be understood by even the thickest front-ranker.
Hans Pienaar’s novel Drie, even with its descriptions of clumsy adolescent sex, is as far from that genre as the author is from Springbok selection.
Rugby novels, however, are difficult to sell, which would be a pity in Pienaar’s case. The most successful one was published in 1857: Tom Brown’s School Days had no sex and, though on the dull side it, endures. It also spawned one of the biggest literary successes of the 20th century, the Flashman novels. Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes’ book, was expelled from Rugby School for drinking, so it’s strange he wasn’t in the First 15.
George MacDonald Fraser, an editor on the Glasgow Herald, reinvented the bully’s life beyond school. He cast him in real-life Victorian dramas, from imperial Britain’s ignominy of the retreat from Kabul to the Indian mutiny (or revolution in today’s age of political correctness) and the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Flashman pitted skills with no less a figure than the cunning Otto von Bismarck and seduced, or was seduced by, the great Malagasy queen Ranavalona.
Flashman, however, as he is in Tom Brown’s School Days, is a coward and a poltroon, one of those lovely English words that emphasises the depths of pusillanimity. Fraser keeps Flashman on his feet when the hero would rather be cowering in a corner, away from any danger. He even awards him a Victoria Cross (VC) and puts him in the battles of Little Big Horn and Isandlwana.
Fraser’s admirers included PG Wodehouse and Christopher Hitchens, who recalled reading in his youth “with shock and glee” the escapades of a “racistsexist-imperialist-you-name-it” officer in one of the British army’s most famous regiments.
If Fraser’s creation sounds outrageous, Hitchens suggested it “took nerves of steel” for an author to write Flashman. Even so, he didn’t have the nerve to put him in a rugby drama where he would have been quickly exposed.
Pienaar may not aspire to the successes of Hughes or Fraser and if Drie did not require nerves of steel it did need unflagging perseverance, and a lot of rewriting. It took the author 20 years to complete, which included finding a publisher (Protea) brave enough to take it on. If Protea and Pienaar are rewarded with good sales, it will not be just the striking cover that judges it well, but what’s between the covers.
Jaco Blignaut, the protagonist of Drie, is someone many will recognise: a young Afrikaner boy growing up in the age of apartheid, confused by all its racial contradictions (his attraction for a black woman being one) and captured by the politico-religious ideology of the time. His reprieve comes in rugby.
Young Jaco is a precocious talent who can play anywhere in the backline but thrives as a flyhalf where he develops the instinct to run rather than kick, even though he kicks like a Handré Pollard.
Jaco’s running game can be seen as one of his first signs of rebelling against the conventions of his youth. Sir Terry McLean of New Zealand, the only rugby writer to be knighted, would have approved of Pienaar’s Jaco; he once wrote that there were only two abominations in life: a nagging wife and a kicking flyhalf.
But young Jaco is not squeaky clean. Pienaar gives him a nasty streak, to avoid making him sound, in a firstperson telling of the story, too much like the author himself, who played a bit of rugby at school and enjoyed it before inevitable injuries intervened. That streak comes to the fore when Jaco sends a hospital pass, on purpose, to one of the team’s wings, who is a love rival for a school beauty.
The novel is part bildungsroman, part middle-age memoir. Jaco escapes an overbearing mother and a misunderstood father to play rugby in France, where Pienaar’s research debunks the ancient myth that the game was created, in a moment of inspiration, by William Webb Ellis picking up a soccer ball and running with it during a match at Tom Brown’s Rugby School. The game’s origins, Pienaar discovered, go far further back
— and especially in France.
France is still topical, which might help Pienaar’s book. Springbok captain Siya Kolisi has gone to play for Racing 92, one of the top French clubs, and Paris was where the Boks won the World Cup last October.
When the Boks won the cup in 2019, for the third time, publisher Jonathan Ball was on the mark with Miracle Men, by News24 sports editor Lloyd Burnard. It was a book written against the tightest of deadlines and was an unapologetic praise song for the team and its coach, Rassie Erasmus.
In one of rugby literature’s great ironies, SA-born Donald McRae’s biography of Eddie Jones was meant to be a celebration of an England victory that had been expected in that tournament. The Boks spoiled the party in the final, but McRae’s book stands up as one of the game’s finest.
Pan Macmillan anticipated 2023’s repeat of 2019 with Rassie, a story as much about an individual as the team that prevailed in some of sport’s most harrowingly close encounters. Like Erasmus picking a winning team, the publisher chose David O’Sullivan, who is more than an amanuensis — a rugby Boswell to Erasmus’s Samuel Johnson.
In an eagerness to read the story, I bought the Afrikaans edition by mistake. I’m glad I did; Rassie’s voice, as brilliantly captured in English by O’Sullivan as it is, has an even stronger sincerity in the subject’s own language, foks en alles.
Parts of Rassie will resonate with Pienaar’s Jaco: a distant (and alcoholic) father, growing up in straitened circumstances in an Afrikaner town with all its SA racial and language prejudices of the time. How Erasmus overcomes this is told with compassion but without exaggerated sympathy or casting any blame: a white man transforming a team while also transforming himself.
For all Erasmus’ eccentricities (disco lights on a stadium’s roof to send messages to those on the field being the best known), there is a belief that picking a rugby team is not done on some emotional whim, but requires almost scientific evaluation. Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, a book on the empirical analysis of Major League Baseball statistics, would be impressed by Rassie’s theories.
O’Sullivan’s writing, and Rassie’s telling, also contain enough tension to fill a thriller. Even for aficionados with eidetic minds who remember the scores from forgotten Bok matches, will relive the drama of closely fought games.
The writer’s greatest achievement, however, is persuading Rassie to open up. As many rugby reporters will confirm, the coach is often a closed book, reticent to the point of distraction. O’Sullivan has not only got Erasmus to talk about
his upbringing, his own playing career (and he was a great player!), his rugby philosophy, but how he decided on making Kolisi the Springbok captain. There were several contenders, among them Duane Vermeulen, who would have been an obvious and uncontroversial appointment, but who was also getting on. As Erasmus explains, he needed someone who would be close to the action, who would have the respect of referees and who would fit his selection philosophy: not always the best player, but the right player.
When Erasmus addressed his assembled players in 2018, ahead of a difficult home series against England, he simply announced: “Siya, you are captain.” There were no gasps of astonishment, no demurring. It did not even feel like an historical moment, “nie eens n fokken bietjie nie”, according to the coach.
Two other books hot on the heels are nostalgic labours of love. Mike “Gringo” Greenaway
— surely the best player in the press box — recalls many of the matches he reported on, and some he didn’t, in The Fireside Springbok. Hendrik “Kabous” Hancke, a Sunday Times reporter and a news editor’s dream who will not return to the office until he has the story locked down, indulges his passion for the game with Onkant! ‘n Rugbyliefdesverhaal (Offside! A rugby love story).
Greenaway sacrificed a possible career in the game because he was drawn to journalism, a rival with his father for the morning’s Mercury, which both men devoured. In his rugby-playing prime, Greenaway was a strong, bustling centre for the Amanzimtoti first XV and much later the only player to get past Nick Mallett, with a deft chip-andchase, in a game of touch rugby for Press vs Bok coaches.
Greenaway, a diffident man, once punted a story he’d written to an aged and sceptical sports editor. To keep the conversation going, he revealed that he had scored nine tries in a weekend league match. “But they were pretty crap,” he conceded of the opposition before flattering the editor. “You could have scored three of them.” The Greenaway story got prominent treatment in the next edition.
The Fireside Springbok gets special treatment with a lavish display of renowned sports photographer Steve Haag’s pictures and some evocative cartoons by Jack “Dr Jack” Swanepoel. Greenaway’s is one of those reassuring books you can sit down to read when you feel depressed about the government, the economy, Eskom or even a, hopefully rare, Springbok defeat. What’s most impressive is that he did it almost all by himself, helped along by friends and without the support of a publisher. He is also its chief salesman.
The author has focused on the personalities of Springbok rugby, from Fairy Heatlie, a dark fairy-tale, to Kolisi & Co, heroes of the World Cup-winning teams of 2019 and 2023.
Heatlie is worth a mention because he was an extraordinary player, captaining Western Province for the first time in 1890 while still a matric pupil at Bishops in Cape Town. He led the team on an 11-year unbeaten run and made his Test debut (the team was not yet the Springboks) aged 19. He became captain of SA in 1896, leading
HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IS PERSUADING RASSIE TO OPEN UP. AS MANY RUGBY REPORTERS WILL CONFIRM, HE IS OFTEN A CLOSED BOOK
the team to its first victory after six defeats, all by Great Britain.
He was embroiled in a financial scandal while still captain. To escape his creditors, he fled SA by rowing out in Table Bay to a yacht on its way to Argentina, where he played in one Test, against England. He returned to SA 20 years later, paid off his debts to stay out of jail and, in 1955, was hailed by one of the country’s leading coaches, Oubaas Markotter, who knew him, as “the greatest forward SA produced”.
His captaincy set a trend for Springbok rugby: from 1896 and for the next 62 years, the team did not lose a single Test series. He died in 1949, aged 77, and nine years before that series record was broken by France in the 1958 series.
Hancke’s Onkant! does not have that kind of ancient rugby history, but it has similar charm. And rugby charm doesn’t come with greater appeal than having a drink with Frik du Preez, a legendary Blue Bulls and Springbok, who arrived in Pretoria as an air force recruit and a high-school fullback. He was quickly sized up by a sergeant who was a team coach and ordered into the scrum where he packed down as a lock — and never looked back.
While they talked, Frik drank beer and Hancke only water because he had to return home on the often unnerving N1 drive from Pretoria to Johannesburg. “Next time you visit,” Frik said as Hancke left, “don’t just drink water like a poephol.” If ever there was an invitation to have a beer, that was it.
The books:
● Drie by Hans Pienaar (published by Protea);
● Rassie by Rassie Erasmus and David O’Sullivan (Pan Macmillan);
● The Fireside Springbok by Mike Greenaway (selfpublished);
● Onkant! ‘n Rugbyliefdes-verhaal by Hendrik Hancke (Jonathan Ball).