Crossing the great divide

In a week that George Bush got re-elected, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored all four goals for Manchester United against Sparta Prague and Britain’s firemen worried about carelessness on Guy Fawkes night the Springboks arrived back in Britain.

Having accompanied the Boks on a number of occasions I was struck by how different the reception had become over the years since touring here with Chick Henderson’s Barbarians in 1979, Naas Botha’s side in 1992 and now Jake White’s team in 2004.

In ’79 we skulked around avoiding demonstrators, in ’92 South Africa’s race problems were still very much an issue and now, after a decade of democracy, we are just a rugby team come to tilt for the Grand Slam.

At Press conferences the group of media interrogators is smaller, there are fewer cameras and the muggers from, especially, the tabloids are no longer in evidence. The rugby “correspondents” of the major broadsheets have all made the trip down the M4, or by train, from London and they are more keen to know about the Springboks’ transformation, as a successful rugby team, under Jake White.

Questions about team selection are half-hearted and for me the best part of being here, compared to Australia just a year ago, is the absence of the patronisation that had crept in when the rugby writers gathered to dissect Springbok rugby.

For me that air of superiority from the writers, more than anything, was the most galling aspect of how far down rugby’s totem pole the Boks had slipped, as neatly encapsulated by Robert Kitson in the ‘The Guardian.’ “To see a confident Springbok squad arrive here (in Cardiff) was to wonder if the past two years has been some kind of sick joke. Even by the standards of the controversial American TV show Extreme Makeover, which transforms people so completely that even their families fail to recognise them, South African rugby has undergone a comprehensive revamp and their impressive new coach Jake White is briskly engineering a truly remarkable sporting fairy tale.

“In White they seem to have uncovered an alchemist with the sure touch of a latter-day Midas.

“This time last year, lest we forget, the rugby world was still reeling from revelations about the Springboks’ infamous pre-World Cup stay at Kamp Staaldraad – Camp Barbed Wire (instead of the correct translation “Camp Steel Wire” the UK Press persists in the miss-translation passed on to them by South Africa’s English Press).

“The previous autumn saw the shameful physical excesses of Twickenham when South Africa were walloped 53-3 by England. Since the 40-year-old White took over from Rudi Straeuli in February, however, it is as if Springbok rugby has re-emerged from the dark ages.”

In addition the race problems that trouble us South Africans so were positively reported as being an attempt by White to tap South Africa’s great resources, Owen Slot in ‘The Times’ seeing a distinction between Zimbabwe’s attempt to replace white with black and South Africa’s efforts at transformation.

Slot wrote: “Springbok rugby, conversely, has stumbled in the right direction and is now taking great, confident strides. Instead of replacing its traditional strength in the white minority, it is adding to it and improving it by enhancing the untapped population. It may be an unusual stance to take, but now, if ever, is a time to wish the South Africa team well.”

There is a genuine belief that John Smit’s Boks, by taking advantage of the malaise of Wales and Scotland, the injuries of England and dousing the fire of the Irish, can pull off the Grand Slam – remember it hasn’t been done since 1984 - and I was struck by some of White’s words in trying to give English and Welsh journalists some perspective on how he sees his situation, for what he said is relevant to Bafana Bafana, the Proteas (awful name), in fact, all South African team sports.

“The mere fact that we’ve become competitive again this year is obviously a huge positive. If South Africa were to win the World Cup in 2007 and then again in 2011 it wouldn’t be seen as a fluke.

“That’s the reality that we’re living in. It’s not like we’re a minnow country that would have to have everything bounce for us to win a World Cup.

“We’re looking at an environment where we have stadiums, we have money, we have history, we have tradition, we have a player base, we have the climate. There’s no reason why we can’t become the strongest nation in world rugby. We just need to make sure that the resources we have are used correctly.”

Quite. Let’s put pressure on administrators to bury their egos and personal agendas and put their games first. Let’s get transformation right. Let’s get on with, at the very least, being the best in Africa.