Through the looking glass

May 2021. Time to look ahead to South Africa’s next British and Irish Lions tour – if there is one.

Will the Springboks still be the world champions or will the steady decline predicted after the break-up of John Smit’s 2007 World Cup winners have left South Africa among the also-rans?

Will there still be room for Lions tours or would the avaricious ambitions of the money men have assured the total control of every waking moment of every top player and made international competition obsolete?

By then, with the help of all kinds of medical aids and magical anti-inflammatories, I’ll hopefully be in my 70th year and probably not even be sitting in front of a keyboard.

Who knows I may even be hooked up to some little cellular gizmo by pods attached to the temples and the machine will interpret what it is I want to say and send a perfect piece of spell-checked copy to a million news sites contained within people’s wrist-watches!

One would probably have to get a quote or two from those who were there. John Smit, South Africa’s greatest captain, will be hard to get hold of on his game estate in Zumaland and loath to break the media silence he imposed on himself when he finally escaped from the fish bowl of Springbok rugby.

Peter de Villiers, looking for all the world like a grumpy old walrus with his snow-white moustache sitting on the stoep of his wine farm in Paarl, will let it be known that he doesn’t read the news media but nevertheless provide a quote along the lines of his having been a prophet without honour, other than among his own people, but that he knew his Springbok blazer was made of good material and that it fitted him well.

Ian McGeechan will decline to be quoted until his appointment to go on his 10th Lions tour as Head Coach had been officially confirmed!

Pardon my musings. What started out as a reflection on the Lions tour was diverted by the online discovery that the IRB is to charge SA Rugby or the Springboks, or both, with misconduct because the players wore white armbands to signal their dissatisfaction with a ludicrous banning handed down to Bakkies Botha in the build-up to the final test against the Lions.

My irritation was instant. Week in and week out the players are subjected to odd and inconsistent refereeing, week in and week out they are forced to accept contradictory punishments from the so-called judiciary that affect their person and income.

Some of the incongruities visited upon the players are often absurdly unfair and incorrect but are these officials, match or otherwise, ever called to book? Are they ever even questioned about their role in bringing the game into disrepute?

Yet when the players, in their frustration, resort to a silent protest the IRB raises itself to action.

It speaks of an organisation out of touch with the needs of the players and those who support the game and it led me to wonder whether in 12 years time, when the next Lions are due in South Africa, the structure of the game will still be as we know it today.

And, having got that off my chest, here are some of my thoughts on the Lions tour:

Springbok player of the series: Morné Steyn; a close call over the only real find Heinrich Brüssow. The way history works Steyn will be immortalised for the 53.7 metre kick at Loftus that won the second yest and with it the series.

Lions player of the series: For me it was Brian O’Driscoll. I had always thought the Irish centre to be overrated but he rose above being stripped of the captaincy to be the Lions’ talisman; displaying an array of skills and the determination to fire up those alongside him. After him, in order, were Mike Phillips, Jamie Roberts, Stephen Jones, Tom Croft (who was not in the original party!) and Simon Shaw – when he was finally picked.

Selection dementia: Both sides suffered from it. The Boks nearly lost the first test by prematurely rushing on a raft of substitutes; needlessly tampered with the starting XV for the second test and again got their substitutions wrong; and gave away the third (Springbok coaches have been fired for less) by making too many changes and unnecessarily exposing inexperienced players. Ian McGeechan also faltered. He should have picked Andrew Sheridan from the start to try to expose the Boks’ scrum experimentation; Martyn Williams to counter South Africa on the ball; Simon Shaw to provide grunt and believed that Shane Williams’s star quality would come to the fore on the big stage.

Newsmaker of the Tour: Peter de Villiers by a mile. Seldom in the annals of rugby tours have so many Pressmen owed so much to just one man.

Match of the Tour: The second test at Loftus Versfeld. In time Schalk Burger’s aberration will be forgotten, or perhaps the moment will add to it, but the match will go down as an all-time epic.

Reality check of the Tour: For Cheeky Watson and the Southern Kings. It’s one thing to demand a team in the Super 14 but quite another to field one – thus the Kings consisted of a good number of out-of-contract has-beens; a smattering of loan players and alarmingly few genuine Eastern Cape boys.

Disappointment of the Tour: The failure to draw a single sell-out crowd to any one of the ten matches. A bloke walking around a function on the Friday night before the last Test rifling a pack of tickets at R400.00 a pop said it all – SA Rugby got it wrong, the tickets were too expensive. (Remember when Nick Mallett was fired for saying that?)

Best feature of the tour: The travelling “Larney Army.” What a great bunch the Lions’ fans were; colourfully dressed, in good spirits (in more ways than one!), unfailingly good humoured and sporting and plastering the place with pounds! The red blotches in all the stadiums said only one thing – Lions tours have to be preserved.