Our friends up north could be in for nasty surprise

Mention you are going to cover a rugby tour and invariably the response is something like: "Lucky fish, can't you fit me in your suit-case?"

This is a reaction normally borne out of complete ignorance of what a journalist goes through when he is on tour. It is no holiday and I have seen people age on longer tours where they are being chased by editors to get copy in from places that have indecipherable communications systems and incompatible technology.

As I write this, it is exactly 48 hours since I left South Africa. I still haven't seen the Springboks, which is why they themselves are not the subject of this column. Where are they? In a five or six star hotel adjoining a golf-course in a resort about 60 kilometres outside of Marseilles.

I am in the vicinity, but a late flight from London through to Marseilles left precious little time for the complicated business of trying to find an alternative to the taxi, which set back colleagues who travelled through a few days ahead by 150 Euro dollars. I just don't have that sort of budget and whereas they travelled in a group and could share the costs, I am journeying alone.

But then there is quite a bit of travelling experience behind this scribe. There is always some alternative way of getting from point A to point B. An 8 Euro bus ride from Marseilles Airport gets you to the train station, and from there it is 7,5 Euro rail journey through to Bandol, which, according to the Bok tour itinerary, is the general area where they are staying.

Bandol is a little like Camps Bay, only it is clearly much older. During the height of summer, it must be heaving with tourists looking for a fun holiday. In winter, which is where we are now, it is more like a ghost town. Every second restuarant is closed and, yes, you've guessed it, all but one of the hotels I came across last night was shut. According to my limited understanding of French, most appear to be opening later in the week, but that was not much help to a weary wanderer looking for a bed to rest a tired body.

The only available hotel was reasonably priced, with only one small problem - the telephone in the room is attached to the wall in a way which says "No internet access". There is a small internet cafe down the road, and it is from there that this wee epistle to the outside world will be sent later on in the day. However it is only open for a limited time.

So why am I telling you all this? Maybe partly to explain to the people paying for this trip why they have not heard from me, but also because this tour is taking place exactly one decade on from my first tour, which was the first post-isolation Springbok tour to France and England.

And the experience so far has not been dissimilar from that very first arrival in Bordeaux in late September 1992. The shock of discovering that the Boks were not staying in the city but out in the industrial area near the Bordeaux Airport. The mortification which greeted our first sight of the box-like rooms, not much bigger than a cupboard. And then the endless frustration of hitting the computer (were they even called laptops in those days?) and discovering that you could not access the outside world through the hotel telephone line.

The words still ring in my ears: "France Telecom, Bonjour". That was the greeting of the telephone operators as they put your reverse charges calls through to South Africa so that you could dictate copy back to an office which had absolutely no sympathy for your plight.

"Why are you dictating. This is very time consuming and costly," would come the crusty remark from some sub-editor who was being kept from his break in the local pub by all the dictation (I have never been one for brevity).

Of course, those days the demands were also different. My brief was to file everything that happened on tour, regardless of whether it was a momentous event or not. It was the first overseas Springbok tour in several years, so they wanted everything.

As the plane flew in over Marseilles yesterday evening, I caught sight of the seaside hotel where the Boks stayed in 1992. It was one of the more centrally situated Bok hotels and I thought that at last they might be happy after all the complaining that had marred the earlier part of the trip.

I was wrong. I spotted a Natal Springbok watching from his verandah as a calm dusk fell on the Mediterranean. Thinking that it was an idyllic setting, and wanting to make phatic conversation, I said something like: "Beautiful, isn't it".

His response was unrepeatable. He spent the next 10 minutes complaining about being in France and then finished off with a savage assualt on the world renowned and much loved French cuisine.

"If I see one more prawn I am going to puke," he said.

I quoted him on that and it was run on the front-pages of all the newspapers back home. It was one of the more memorable stories of the tour, but today it would not make the paper, let alone the front-page.

The Boks have been back for 10 years now and their whole approach to touring is more professional. They are here for one purpose, and that is to win a rugby match on Saturday.

Which is also why they have shirked the opportunity to stay in Marseilles, one of the oldest cities in the world, and are, in the words of an Afrikaans colleague, sitting in a hotel where the most entertaining thing would be "to sight a fat German walking on a golf course".

Yes, you've guessed it - this change of approach has now made the journalists the unhappy ones as we follow a team that eschews the bright lights.

Something else may have changed, too. Before the first test on the 1992 tour in Lyon, a drunk New Zealander ended up sharing a taxi ride with some of us. He was in town for the rugby and, unlike us South Africans, he seemed convinced the Boks would win.

"They'll win mate, South Africa is a great rugby nation and they will be too strong and skillful for France."

Until they actually played each game, it was the standard expectation from foreigners.

Somehow there was an aura about the Boks which, in the eyes of outsiders, made them appear better than they really were.

Maybe then we have turned full circle. While most South Africans appear to be expecting the Boks to do well this time, the years of seeing Bok teams relying purely on strength and brute force on these end of year tours has sent the British rugby media into cynical mode.

During my night in London I watched a recording of a chat between two prominent British rugby personalities. They were analysing the Currie Cup and New Zealand NPC semi-finals.

The consensus was that comparing the two countries was like looking at chalk and cheese - while New Zealanders were fast and skilled, the South Africans still relied on a neanderthal approach which emphasised testosterone ahead of skill and pace.

Clearly these guys were illustrating what some British writers had long ago told me - not too much interest is paid in the Tri-Nations up north. Or at least not in those times when there is no controversy for the tabloids to feed on.

Which suggests to me that our friends could be in for a little surprise in the next few weeks. England is of course the big one for the Boks, but reading through the London papers, it seems their big game is the All Blacks.

If they really do think there is that big a gap between South Africa and their traditional rivals, the English could be in for quite a shock just over a fortnight from now. Suddenly I am a whole lot more confident of a Springbok victory and, for the first time in several years, spotting some smiling South Africans on the tube ride back to London from Twickenham.