The Boks are here, there and everywhere
Some things in rugby are so difficult to find, they drive astrophysicists to drink. Scientists operating the Giant Magellan Telescope are struggling to locate an upside to Bath’s domestic campaign; Captain Spock is still light years away from a planet on which the Welsh regions might flourish; and any public inquiry into the failings of the sport’s governing class would stretch to infinity and beyond.
Which brings us to the South Africans, who pose the opposite problem, being all too easy to spot. There is more chance of someone mistaking Joe Marler for Henry Arundell than of watching a game in any of Europe’s major leagues without a whiff of Springbok about it.
We can now, without trying terribly hard, pick full teams of imports from the Republic, all in their right positions, from each of this continent’s elite professional competitions. If some are relatively obscure by Cheslin Kolbe standards (yes, that’s the Cheslin Kolbe who currently plays his rugby in Toulon), others are very big hitters indeed.
A sample: Faf de Klerk, Vincent Koch, Lood de Jager and Andre Esterhuizen in the English Premiership; Handre Pollard, Cobus Reinach, Trevor Nyakane and Eben Etzebeth in the French Top 14; Damian de Allende, R G Snyman and Duane Vermeulen in the United Rugby Championship, which, lest we forget, also boasts four South African teams full of South Africans playing matches in South Africa. You simply can’t get too much of a good thing. Apparently.
There is a green-and-gold presence at every Premiership club bar Bristol. The same applies to all four Irish provincial teams, both of Scotland’s professional set-ups, the two sides flying the Italian flag in the URC and the vast majority of Top 14 outfits, from Stade Francais in the north to Perpignan in the far south.
Next season, even the “European” Champions and Challenge Cup tournaments will have a Springbok-y feel to them, with, we must assume, matches in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban (none of them especially close to Leicester or Llanelli or La Rochelle, but who the hell cares about the travelling supporter?) And as the ultra-intimidating Etzebeth remarked only a few days ago, his country’s Six Nations accession plan “makes sense”.
Most of the things that make sense to Etzebeth make sense to everyone else. He tends to insist on it. But at the risk of annoying a man who, with the breeze in the right direction, could poleaxe a Bristol-based writer with a single raising of an eyebrow on the Cote d’Azur, it is tempting to wonder if he is talking out of his fundament.
The Springboks want a slice of the Six Nations because the Six Nations cake is bigger than everyone else’s. So far, so logical. What doesn’t add up, in terms of the many precious things that cannot be measured in pounds
“The Springboks want a slice of the Six Nations cake because it’s bigger than anyone else’s”
and euros, is the commodification of South African rugby. The over-exposure of it. Ultimately, perhaps, the uprooting of it.
We are already seeing some shoulder-shrugging “so whatery” at the URC level. There have been some big crowds at Loftus Versfeld and Kings Park just recently, but only because the ticket prices were cheaper than a bag of wine gums.
Entry to the Bulls-Ulster game last month was a little over £1. As Bath have been known to charge 70 times as much for a seat in an uncovered Recreation Ground stand in the teeth of a rampant south-westerly, this was undeniably a bargain. What it wasn’t was commercially sustainable.
Rugby’s partial commitment to globalisation – enthusiastically embraced in Britain and Ireland when it comes to signing southern hemisphere talent; far from the done thing when it comes to promotion and relegation – works pretty well for the direct participants. Ask any Premiership rugby director about his South African contingent and he’ll tell you that “we get a lot of player for our money”. Ask the recruits for their motives, and they’ll have no hesitation in explaining that “we get a lot of money for our playing”.
Yet for the domestic structures of a sport going through a painful period of shrinkage, the g-word is more of an issue. Not least in South Africa, where Eastern Province and the Free State have to all intents and purposes been disenfranchised and the Currie Cup, much diminished during the Super
Rugby era, awaits further loss of status as the top-tier teams head ever deeper into the Eurozone.
This columnist has never had the slightest problem with rugby adventurers. Quite the opposite. Jonny Wilkinson, Simon Shaw and James Haskell among the top-of-the-bill acts; Nick Abendanon, Carl Fearns and Joe El Abd among the chorus line; Zach Mercer and Harry Glover among the current wannabes – all played, or are currently playing, pro rugby in France and revelled, or are revelling, in the experience. Good on ‘em.
But there is a world of difference between individual wanderlust and the stripping out of a great rugby nation’s talent on an industrial scale. How long before South African rugby turns into West Indian cricket?
There’s a thought to lower the spirits.