Rugby’s Renaissance man
Dobbo is besotted with the province and the feeling is mutual, despite the Stormers losing the URC final to Munster
The author EM Forster wrote about rounded characters and there can be no more rounded a character than Stormers rugby coach John Dobson, himself a novelist.
He’s generous, creative and empathetic to a fault, always trying new things and not afraid to inject a little humour into often dour proceedings.
He’s also besotted with the Western Cape and the province’s rugby DNA, which he believes runs deep. He’s been offered other rugby jobs, some high-profile ones, but is loath to leave.
“They say we don’t have an academy down here, but I look at it differently,” he says. “We’ve got Paul Roos and Paarl Gym and Bishops and Paarl Boys. Not all those boys will become Stormers but that gives me as Western Province Currie Cup and Stormers coach a helluva lot to choose from.”
To illustrate the idea that rugby in the Cape is a qualitatively different beast to, say, cricket, Dobson talks about the way a school such as Bishops, his alma mater, might respond to being beaten by Paarl Gym on the rugby field.
“In cricket it would be unfortunate … one of those things,” he says. “If the same thing happened in a first XV rugby game, the old boys would make their voices heard. There would be fundraisers and genbecause eral concern. Rugby’s part of the fabric of culture in this part of the world, it runs deep.”
Tickets to the United Rugby Championship (URC) final against Munster two weeks ago were sold out within three hours. Dobson was sought after by the media and visited Athlone Stadium ahead of coaching the WP Currie Cup side against the Pumas (WP won) there only eight days before the URC final. He even found time to offer coaching advice to a struggling club rugby side.
In making himself available, Dobson became the Cape’s favourite son, a man sensitive to the community’s need for narratives of hope. Everything was so well laid out for the final: the Stormers were in front of a partisan home crowd; they knew the conditions and had key players Deon Fourie and Marvin Orie back from injury. All the players had played in — and won — a final before, when they beat the Bulls at Cape Town Stadium last year. It was gearing up to be the perfect conclusion to a long season.
Except Munster didn’t read the script. What South Africans generally don’t know is that Munster forever live in the shadow cast by Leinster, their city cousins. Munster come from Limerick, in the provinces, while Leinster are full of posh Dublin boys and money.
Context is important,
Munster never need to be asked to get in touch with their sense of grievance and neglect.
With an age-old tradition of resentment and neglect to fall back on, Munster needed no second invitation to get in touch with their inner mongrel in the final. Their work rate was stupendous. They harried like men possessed and tackled like Trojans, being spun into motion by that slickest of scrumhalves, the peerless Connor Murray.
By contrast, the Stormers were turgid. Their lineout was creaky, their half-backs sleepy, their overall game just a halfsecond off from where it should have been.
Dobson clearly had words at halftime and, for 20 or 25 minutes in the second half it looked like a contest, but the Stormers were playing catchup
after going absent in the first half and lost 19-14.
With all that was stacked in their favour going into the final, should the Stormers not have done better? And should Dobson not have cast aside the rounded nice guy persona for a week or two for something more focused and angry?
Truth to tell, the Stormers lacked mongrel in the final. Intelligent and thoughtful man that he is, Dobson knows this only too well. He is proud that the Stormers lack big-name players. They come under the salary cap and he intimates that teams are organic wholes, built from the bottom up.
Dobson also isn’t one to overreact.
When the bruises have healed he’ll be at it again, a year older, a year wiser, secure in the knowledge that he’s still the Cape’s favourite rugby son.