The birth pains of the new Boks
THE Springboks play Wales at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff tomorrow, a venue that has not always been a happy hunting ground for them. In fact, in 1999, the Boks lost there to Wales for the first time in history.
MIKE GREENAWAY recalls the turbulent events leading up to a match that celebrated the opening of the colossal Stadium but which were also a necessary growing pain for South African rugby.
MORE often than not, the outcome of a rugby match is decided by what happens between the four white lines on the day, but every so often there is a pre-match dynamic that influences a team’s performance, a sub-plot that is unknown to the public.
The Springboks’ historic defeat to Wales in 1999 is a classic case in point. Wales had failed in 12 previous attempts to beat the Boks, dating back to 1906, and a year before had lost 96-13 to the Boks in Pretoria, but in a match against the ‘95 World Cup champions to commemorate a new millennium and a new stadium, the seeds of defeat were sown in an unhappy team meeting just two days before the match.
The Boks had won 19 of their previous 20 matches and should have comfortably dispatched Wales, but a poorly-timed side-show involving Sarfu boss Rian Oberholzer reading the riot act to the Boks on the subject of transformation torpedoed morale.
In hindsight, though, that 29-19 gift to Wales was a positive watershed for South African rugby in that it marked the last ever all-white Springbok team and was a significant milestone on the road to transformation.
Today, we can view that defeat as essential collateral damage incurred in the progression to a multi-racial Springbok team, but at the time the political interference on the eve of a Test match effectively sabotaged the Boks’ unbeaten record against Wales.
It is doubtful that another rugby team has ever been so deflated by offfield events as the Boks were that day.
To give context, back in 1999 there were no quota requirements at Springbok level and coach Nick Mallett selected the team on merit, as he saw it.
Mallett had ensured that “merit only selection” was in his contract when he succeeded Carel du Plessis in 1997, but in ’99 his contract was up for review and his employers wanted that clause removed in favour of a contract that was more progressive on the transformation front.
Sarfu CEO Oberholzer flew over to Cardiff with Mallett’s new and altered contract in his briefcase. As it turned out, Oberholzer and Mallett bumped into each other on a Cardiff pavement, before their scheduled official meeting, and an impromptu coffee ensued.
Welsh passers-by would have been oblivious to Mallett quietly telling Oberholzer to get lost …
But let’s go back a bit …
In Tests just prior to Cardiff, the Boks had played home games against touring Italy and had annihilated them 74-3 in Port Elizabeth and then 101-0 in Durban. In PE, Breyton Paulse had marked his debut with a hat-trick of tries and scored another the following week while in Durban, Deon Kayser had also scored a hat-trick.
But when Mallett announced his team to play Wales in Cardiff a week later, neither Paulse nor Kayser was in the team, with Mallett reverting to his long-standing wing pairing of Stefan Terblanche (who in fairness had scored five tries against Italy), and Pieter Rossouw.
The big issue was that the absence of Paulse and Kayser made it an allwhite Springbok team, and back in South Africa some saw it as a step backwards and the s##t hit the fan.
Politicians were livid, and they voiced their disapproval to Sarfu.
Mallett, approached by my colleague at that time, Gavin Rich, on the all-white team issue early that week following a story request from the Cape Times, had defiantly said: “I will not be pushed around on this. I feel very strongly about it.”
Mallett added that he wanted to protect the black players in contention for the team – Paulse and Deon Kayser – from being seen as “window-dressing”.
“Every player who is in the team must know that he deserves his place and is strictly there on merit,” Mallett told Rich. “I don’t want to see Deon and Breyton being in a position where they might feel they owe their place in the team to anything other than rugby ability. The fact that they are black must have nothing to do with their chances of playing for the Boks.”
But John Ncinane, an ANC MP and a Sarfu executive member was just as emotional. He phoned Oberholzer and said: “When Nick Mallett was sitting in Constantia eating bacon and eggs, my people were on Robben Island breaking stones.”
The heat was on Oberholzer to fix a situation that was untenable to many politicians in South Africa.
After his contract extension meeting with Mallett had fallen apart, and the situation exacerbated by the all-white team selection, Oberholzer called a meeting with the players and management in the team room of the Boks’ hotel in Cardiff and delivered a speech that is quite possibly the most demotivating any national team has experienced two days before a match.
Oberholzer told the players and the management that the Boks were out of tune with transformation and that they were the last all-white team that would play for South Africa.
The players, hearing that their livelihoods could well be compromised going forward should they have to make way for perceived quota players, quietly booed Oberholzer as he exited the room.
Robbie Kempson, the loosehead prop, later reflected: “The players had no issue with the transformation message but it was the hostile manner in which it was delivered that got to us. That and the fact that Breyton and Deon were made to feel very awkward. And all of this was not our fault. We did not pick ourselves.”
Just days before a big Test match, the players felt that their own union did not back them and that their future in the green and gold was uncertain. They were an unsettled bunch when they took to the field.
However you look at it, history was made on two fronts that June day in Cardiff. Wales beat the Boks for the first time in 93 years and never again has an all-white team been picked.