Springboks emulated Gerrie’s Monaco demolition

These final days getting ready to depart for the World Cup are like the feeling you get when you are at a smaller airport such as the ones in Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Inverness or Dunedin really early in the morning waiting for a 737 to fly in.

While you wait everything is still, a silence hangs over the scene. But you know that when the plane lands there is going to be a deafening roar outside and that the tranquillity inside the building, currently interrupted only by the odd janitor or car hire attendant going about their early morning business, will be shattered by the buzz of passengers.

Right now I am writing this on my verandah, with only the sound of the spring sunbirds and a snoring dog for company. It’s a peaceful scene, but I know that my lifestyle is going to change within the next week with the effect of a Boeing 737 landing in my garden.

There will be flights to catch, busy airports to move through, deadlines to meet, rugby matches to watch, press conferences to attend, and there are going to be people, people everywhere and not a drop to drink ... (okay, now I am getting a bit carried away, the exchange rate isn’t as bad as that).

It has been hard just recently to concentrate on the rugby. The World Cup lasts for almost seven weeks, and that is a long time to be away. A sod of a long time, in fact, if you consider the amount of organisation that has to go into keeping your house and family running while you are away. So there have been a lot of things to organise, a lot of red tape to get through with regards the trip.

But if it has been an uneasy, even eerie hiatus period for me, I can only imagine how bad it has been for the players. It’s unlikely I am going to injure myself writing this article. In my time as a rugby writer, I would imagine I must have written something like...heck, I can’t even hazard a guess. Over a million words? I would say at least that. But I have never sprained a finger, never suffered any work related injury.

With the players it is different. The injury that poor Jean de Villiers suffered against Namibia was not his first. It was not even his first on the eve of a World Cup. He has missed one World Cup, and he must have felt for an awful moment or two after the Namibian game that he was about to miss another.

For the players, the final count-down to RWC 2007, with all those warm-up games they had to play, must have been quite tense. They needed to perform, to get the team’s momentum up, but at the same time every minute they spent on the field risked injury, and a sad exit for their World Cup dream.

Well done to them then for completing the phase with a minimum of fuss, for doing it without too much in the way of disruption through injury, and for completing their task at Murrayfield, in a match against a team that really did speak a good game beforehand, in such clinical fashion.

The Edinburgh match reminded me a bit of my experience as a teenager, a time when I was a passionate supporter of boxing, and in particular South Africa’s two great heavyweight hopes, Gerrie Coetzee and Kallie Knoetze.

The win over Scotland was similar in many ways to Gerrie’s one round demolition of Leon Spinks in Monte Carlo in 1979. Like the Boks this last Saturday, there was a bit of foreboding about Gerrie’s chances, particularly after Knoetze, who had gone in as favourite, had been beaten by John Tate in a similar world title eliminator in Mmabatho a few weeks earlier.

Trevor Quirk, in Monte Carlo to do radio commentary, clearly didn’t think much of Coetzee’s chances of winning. He ended his preview to the fight by saying: “... who knows, we were wrong in Mmabatho, maybe we will be wrong in Monte Carlo too. For Gerrie Coetzee’s sake, and South Africa’s sake, let’s hope so.”

The negativity appeared to be vindicated when Spinks came out smoking for about half a minute, maybe more. But then, in a scene that was quite surreal, the American flew to the canvas three times in quick succession, with Coetzee hardly seeming to hit him with any great savagery.

The Bok tries in Edinburgh were a bit like Coetzee’s punches – they were clean, they were clinical, they were devastating to the opposition, and yet you got the impression they didn’t have to sweat too much.

Of course, Gerrie went on to lose to Tate in the real deal world title fight at Loftus a couple of months later. Here’s hoping 1979 doesn’t repeat itself. There is no reason it should...