Sanzar wasborn over R30’scoffees and sandwiches
We’ll always have 1995. And we’ll always have 2007. And we will most assuredly have 2019. Each has their own significance, rhyme and reason, but the 1995 Rugby World Cup was a time when things were fresh and full of hope, when SA seemed like it had a real chance of becoming the land all of its people wanted and needed.
The memories of 1995 can be quite overwhelming at times, becoming a little shinier as the years pass, glossing over the opportunities missed to use that buzz to truly transform rugby and the country.
But there is little wrong in celebrating a tournament many believe was the greatest World Cup of them all. There is little wrong in remembering and smiling. Smiling at the memory of the opening match at Newlands, wincing at the ugliness of Boet Erasmus, both the stadium and the match that resulted in that very necessary chance to bring in the now fit Chester Williams.
I remember a picture from that time of Morné du Plessis walking with Pieter Hendriks after the wing had been banned after the punch-up against Canada. I have a print of a picture taken by a photographer from The Star of James Dalton sitting on a bench in a garden holding a rugby ball, staring at the ground as he realised his tournament was also over.
It still seems weird that the rules allowed for replacements for players banned for foul play.
The 1995 event was the beginning of rugby’s great change, the end of shamateurism and the start of it becoming a sport that can take three steps forward then two back as it tries its heart out to become truly global.
In his book the Sunday Times of London rugby writer Stephen Jones remembers the day when the southern hemisphere unions caught a march on the north.
The San bar at the Sandton Sun hotel was once known as the Gazebo bar. It was and is a place for informal business meetings, after-work drinks. It was also the place where Sanzar was born.
The presidents of the three unions met there a few days before the final. Louis Luyt of SA, Richie Guy of New Zealand and Leo Williams of Australia sat at a table, just the three of them, and mapped the way forward.
Jones wrote that they spent three hours talking. He knew this because he was sitting at the next table trying to listen in. They already had a $555m, 10year television deal from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation signed and sealed.
In those three hours, they’d “fixed a new name for a joint operation between their three unions: SANZAR. Better than ARSANZ.
They’d fixed an annual, home-and-away Tri-Nations event, at last giving them the means with which to emulate some of the rampaging success of the Five Nations in Europe,” wrote Jones.
“A new, appealing and commercially whizzing structured season was in place within three hours, with barely a raised voice. Pay the bill, Louis.”
How much did this meeting cost, this chat to alter the way rugby in the southern hemisphere would operate?
“Three coffees and three toasted sandwiches. Say, R30. Or £3,” wrote Luyt.
And here we are, 25 years later, with rugby waiting its turn to be allowed to return to the field, to try to salvage what is left of the season.
The players of 1995 have been rolled out via remote interviews. Television has shown repeats of the matches of 1995. Journalists have written reams of accounts of what happened in detail back then. Francois Pienaar managed to mention 1995 in the first 10 seconds during a media conference to announce the launch of the Solidarity Cup. He couldn’t help himself.
The 1995 World Cup was also the beginning of my relationship with the Pirates Sports Club. I travelled from the wild East Rand to Pirates with friends to watch the semifinal and the final on TV. I now live a kilometre or so up the road from the club and have done my part in ensuring that the bar remains standing.
When it opens again under lockdown advanced level 3 I’m going to unsocially social distance the hell out of a beer or four on the patio and remember 1995 all over again.