The press box is in injury time
• Newspaper journalists have been eclipsed
Before the TV sports studio there was the press Box, always upper case in the minds of its denizens if not in their copy. Today it hardly matters; in its diminished state, the press box no longer carries the capital clout it once did.
Now everyone is an expert. They’ve seen the televised game, heard the opinions and made up their minds even before the first print run is done. Gone are the days when the pen was mightier even than the cathode ray tube. It has since succumbed to the satellite dish, streaming, LCD and the 5G phone.
Once the press box ruled, its every word hung onto. Close to midnight, and from all sides of Cape Town’s divide, cars would block the narrow Burg Street on a Friday, much to the annoyance of truck drivers trying to get out first editions of Cape Times.
People needed confirmation of the paper’s football writer Harold Butler of what had happened less than two hours earlier to Cape Town City at Hartleyvale, or Hellenic in Green Point Stadium, even though many had been in the crowd.
Similar scenes played out in Claremont’s Main Road on a Saturday evening when AC “Ace” Parker of Cape Argus took a vicarious star turn after the rugby at Newlands. Whatever arguments there might have been about the match and its outcome — and there were always many — Ace’s words in the Late Final would settle them.
For all their glamour and past glories, I can’t see SuperSport’s lot stopping traffic.
In the press box of Butler and Parker no makeup was required, there were few if any delicate feelings for those they reported on (kicking flyhalves were especially reviled), no need for a “continuity person” with anodyne observations, and definitely no clapping (well, not always; hands were meant for typewriter keyboards, notebooks and pens, not applause).
Of course, there were exceptions. At the opening match of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the local hacks and their Aussie counterparts were awarded the press box front row at Newlands. Just behind them sat the supercilious mob from London, always ready to pour scorn, or put the knife in. When Pieter Hendriks, the Springbok wing, rounded David Campese and left the great Wallaby for dead, the entire local contingent rose as one to cheer the try to celebrate with highfives. After the Bok victory, one patronising Pom came over to congratulate the home press, adding: “We can understand your delight, but you’d never see us doing that. Not in the press box.”
Never? Seventeen days later, at the same venue, the English press were now in the front row for a quarterfinal against Australia. With the game in the balance, and probably headed for extra time, England flyhalf Rob Andrew kicked a drop goal that clinched the match 25-22. The supposedly neutral English rugby writers were suddenly out of their seats to join the deafening applause of a Newlands that resembled Twickenham on the day with so many visitors. All irony was lost.
WALES
That was not the first time press box etiquette was ignored. In 1972 when John Pullin’s frankly poor England team pulled off a shock victory against a strong Springbok side at Ellis Park, the visiting correspondents were delirious. Except for one: Vivian Jenkins, the èminence grise of Britain’s rugby-writing fraternity, had just filed his report for the London Sunday Times (not one of his best, it need be added) and looked on with disapproval.
“Aren’t you excited about this, Viv?” asked an ignorant local. “I can’t get excited by this,” replied the 60-year-old, who had covered many rugby Test matches and himself played in 15. Too late, the local man realised: Viv is Welsh! And up till then, Wales had never beaten the Boks. It must have rankled.
Outbursts like those can be excused. It’s hard to keep emotion, and its display, out of the press box while there is so much of it invested on the field
and in the stands. Those celebrating hacks are not always as dispassionate as they pretend to be. They’re human, after all. Even the TV commentators of today can’t always remain po-faced. There are moments when they’re more carnival barker than commentator: “Try time!” or “It went like a tracer bullet!” are among the more common exclamations in a profession where the competition is stiff to reach a 1,000 clichés in a season.
If the press box is taken less seriously today, it might be because it’s a lot quieter, silent laptops having replaced the noisy typewriters and, in big games of the past, the clatter of telex machines. The collective pressing of “send” buttons hardly creates the frenetic level of Parker on deadline, prising sheets of paper (along with carbon copies) from his typewriter and shouting “copy!” to one of his collaborators.
The Newlands press box of the time was filled with an array of characters who would have inspired any playwright. If the action on the field was boring, you needed only look around you for drama, sometimes spiced with sniping. In the back row, with a view of the field and press gallery in front of him, was Parker. Respected, even by the panjandrums of the rugby hierarchy, he was reliable, admired, helpful (especially to young colleagues) and liked by everyone. His arrival, usually in the midst of a curtain-raiser, would turn heads because he was so recognisable: portly, always in a suit and trilby (and in matching shoes if he’d passed
inspection by his wife, Hilda, before leaving home).
Ace arrived burdened by portable typewriter, briefcase and what seemed to be the entire week’s worth of newspapers. Where he thought he would get time to read them no-one knew because he began typing copy almost before he’d sat down. In those days, the Argus had several editions on a Saturday afternoon and the deadlines were unforgiving. If it was a big game and Parker regarded any game he was covering as big he would file what was called “running copy”, almost like a written radio commentary (tenses often getting muddled). The Argus, like most newspapers of the time, had not yet moved into the modern era of computer typesetting and relied on hotmetal printing, which had not changed much since Gutenberg’s day in the 15th century.
Often Parker’s first lines of copy would read: “Western Province kicked off into a stiff breeze …” From that point he seldom took a breather. Each page of copy would be whipped out and handed over his shoulder to one of his collaborators, Herbie Frootko (these names are not made up), who sat directly behind in a glassed-in booth shielded from most of the noise. Frootko read Parker’s words to dictate typist Dot Burbidge, back at Newspaper House.
Dot doubled as the editor’s secretary, but her real job was taking down Parker’s copy on Saturdays. Burbidge would work beyond the call of duty. Long after everyone had deserted the newsroom floor on a Saturday night, she would be left in darkness with only the dim glow of a desk lamp.
One floor down, the last sports page was being wheeled away, its metal type and picture blocks locked in a chase, the steel frame keeping everything together before it was transformed into a flong, a papier-mâché mould that would be cast into a halfcylinder to fit on the printing presses. All the while, Parker would be dictating updates via Frootko to Burbidge, neither of them brave enough to break the news that it was all in vain: the Late Final presses were running.
COLLABORATOR
Parker, with his famous bulk, presided over the entire back row of the Newlands press box. Alongside him, he had the imperturbable and versatile Michael Owen-Smith, providing assurance to the staff back in the office and marshalling captions for photographs that had been rushed to the ground and were still wet from the darkroom processing.
On the other side of Parker sat probably his most valuable, and voluble, collaborator. Norman East ran a chemist shop in Church Street, diagonally opposite Newspaper House. He was another Parker devotee, and Parker’s “eyes” in the press box. Striking those keys furiously as the game progressed, Parker sometimes missed vital moments in a match. No matter. East would give him an instant replay.
In his bright-blue bowling club blazer, its collars festooned with a variety of badges, and wearing a silver-grey porkpie hat, East stood out among the drab lot in the box, his language as colourful as his dress. While supplying Parker with vital runof-play information, he was also able to heap loud abuse on a referee or a player. “Vuil gat, stuur hom af!” was one of his louder observations, one that almost got him expelled from the press box.
For all the fond nostalgia, they say press box food has improved. Fans don’t associate the place with eating, but it’s long been part of the deal.
The Newlands rugby press box once supplied coffee and slices of fruit cake. Cynics said the cake was left over from a called-off wedding of an ancient spinster who served as assistant secretary of the Western Province Rugby Football Union
— a position of great power that she wielded ferociously.
Across the railway line at the cricket stadium, tedious cold meats were regular fare. Fred Labuschagne, the Sunday Times man in Cape Town, rebelled. His wife would pack him a coolerbox lunch that he served with the flourish of a maitre d’, flicking a tiny white tablecloth across his workspace. There were shiny cutlery, cold chicken, and a variety of fresh salad ingredients dressed by olive oil and balsamic vinegar, all washed down with a glass of cold chardonnay.
Complaining about the food in those days contributed to a press box solidarity that was honoured more in the breach. In 1970 two prominent newspaper reporters were banned from the Ellis Park press box by Transvaal Rugby Union president Jannie le Roux, who ran affairs like a dictator.
When Die Transvaaler, a local Joburg rag once edited by Hendrik Verwoerd, offended him by asking about an arrangement between his bottle-store business and the stadium, he promptly declared the paper’s rugby reporters press box persona non grata.
A meeting called by the other rugby writers to protest came to nothing. The newspaper’s two prominent writers — John du Toit and Neil Steyn — were forced to sit among the crowd on a temporary stand, taking notes with pads on their knees while being offered a variety of opinions from those around them.
But in other less threatening situations, the atmosphere in the press box was convivial. Few found the need to out-scoop one another and at times they could even be helpful to the ignorant.
In the corrugated iron brutalism of the old Ellis Park, the radio commentators sat almost cheek by jowl with the writers, cordoned off by a flimsy panel that failed to suppress the sound. Gerhard Viviers was once overheard in the press box during a Currie Cup match getting the name of the Transvaal flyhalf wrong (Jannie Barnard had been replaced shortly before the kickoff by an obscure lookalike). News of the substitution had evidently not reached the emotive Afrikaans commentator, so he was helpfully corrected by a print reporter at halftime when the broadcaster had returned briefly to the studio.
Back on air, Viviers apologised profusely to his listeners for the mistake and pleaded forgiveness. His English counterpart, the mellifluous Charles Fortune, with whom Viviers had shared their mistake, carried on glibly: “Jannie Barnard this, Jannie Barnard that …” before taking a deep breath and declaring: “You know, when I take another look at that young man playing flyhalf for Transvaal, it strikes me that’s not Jannie Barnard at all, but a young fellow by the name of …”. The name, alas, has disappeared in the mists of time and neither commentator is around today to help us.
The tale sounds apocryphal, but Viviers insisted it was true. In fairness to Viviers and Fortune, the press box at the old Ellis Park, unlike the one of today, was distant from the action and it was easy to get names wrong. Mistakes like that wouldn’t happen today, would they? But something has been lost along the way.
IN THE CORRUGATED IRON BRUTALISM OF THE OLD ELLIS PARK, COMMENTATORS SAT ALMOST CHEEK BY JOWL WITH THE WRITERS
ACE PARKER, WITH HIS FAMOUS BULK, PRESIDED OVER THE ENTIRE BACK ROW OF THE NEWLANDS PRESS BOX