Springboks need to reclaim the spirit of James Joyce

It has been a break of almost four years, but the Springbok hotel in Paris is in many senses a home from home.

World Cup rules stipulated that they had to go elsewhere in 1999 to build up for the Jannie de Beer "foot of God" semi-final. But both in 1996, when they travelled to France after two weeks in Argentina, and in 1997, when they arrived from Bologna in Italy, the Springboks made the Concorde Layafette their Parisian headquarters.

In many ways, the place reminds me of Harry Viljoen's predecessor, Nick Mallett. It was Mallett who first suggested the Concorde as a Springbok base when he served as assistant coach Andre Markgraaff on the 1996 end of year tour.

And Mallett was the man in charge of the tour party when they visited here a year later. Although the Boks played only one of the four matches on the French leg in Paris itself, the hotel was home to the tourists for the best part of two weeks.

The midweek team did their own seperate thing while for the first test in Lyon the Boks travelled down the Friday before the game on the TGV speed train and returned to the Concorde the very next day.

If I was pressed I could tell you some wonderful stories about parties held at the Concorde which went into the wee hours of the morning.

Most of those though involved journalists, other hangers-on and on at least one occasion a London-based party of expats who came across for matches either by train or by ferry.

The players grew quite fond of the Concorde too and one familiar face I miss around the foyer on Springbok tours is that of James Small.

The many capped former wing had a bit of a love affair with France and the French people. Much of his popularity stemmed back to his first tour, the isolation breaking trip in 1992, when he was one of the few members of that vintage who made a genuine attempt to get to know the local people and the local custom.

I had the pleasure of sharing Small's company on a day-long car journey together with an English Roumanian journalist Chris Thau, who later went on to become the publicity officer for the World Cup organisation.

Small enjoyed flying no more than I did and when Thau offered him a lift to Paris from the southern city of Beziers, James jumped at it like a kid grabbing at candy.

We were both later to regret our decision when Mr Thau briefly assumed the French roads were a race track, but that is another story.

I haven't seen James for a while now but when I do I am going to ask him if Thau has finished the article - or was it book? - he claimed to be writing on Small and which he used to justify his many questions of the former Springbok superstar.

Small is gone now but many things about Paris remain the same. I, and most of my fellow South Africans, can no longer afford to drink there, but at least the old James Joyce pub adjoining the hotel is still in its old place.

And long may it remain there to remind future South African tourists of one of the greatest celebrations Springbok rugby has enjoyed in the nine years since we have been back in the international fold.

It was at the James Joyce after the 52-10 win by Gary Teichmann's team in 1997 that I witnessed the most spontaneous and heartfelt coming together of Springboks in the nine odd years that I have followed them on tour.

We won't go into details about which players got onto the bar counter and sang to the throngs of supporters. Neither will we reveal the names of supporters, some of them quite well known in the rugby fraternity, who responded in kind and even shed their clothing in celebration.

Mallett was there with the broadest beaming grin you could ever imagine. Long into the small hours of the morning the Boks celebrated at the pub.

Then, when the proprietor said it was time to shut down (it was already long after closing time), several moved on to other venues before returning with the rising sun - and just in time for the flight connection to London.

There were good reasons for the many South African headaches the next morning.

The Boks, with their win, had undeniably turned the corner after an horrific year which had included a series defeat to the British Lions.

You got the impression that the players and officials present knew they were onto a good thing and that it was the start of a glorious era in South African rugby.

As it turned out, they were both right and wrong. The Boks under Mallett did go on to win another 15 tests and equalled the record set by Brian Lochore's All Blacks of three decades ago for successive victories.

But while success did follow, the Springboks only twice more repeated the glorious brand of running rugby that buried the French in their farewell to Parc des Princes - at Twickenham in a record victory over England the following weekend before the landslide thrashing of Scotland in Edinburgh in the final match.

Perhaps it is my imagination, but ever since the last visit to James Joyce, South African rugby appears to have been busy with a perpetual search for rugby's elusive Holy Grail.

For the most part it has been a case of using every tour as an opportunity to start again. Usually it is to start a new game or a new policy, this time the emphasis appears to be on going retro in order to establish a new culture of winning.

A team with Braam van Straaten in it at flyhalf is surely not geared to play the running game which buried the French here last time.

Argue the point as much as you want, somehow Van Straaten's selection in a No.10 jersey does not fit in with the call made earlier this year for a dynamic, attacking approach.

In several other areas we have players starting again (AJ Venter the example here) and others we have players making a belated start to something they should have been busy with all along (take a bow Trevor Halstead).

Unless there is a dramatic about turn on the SA Rugby policy regarding overseas players, Van Straaten will not be a long-term option at flyhalf.

Something tells me that neither will Andre Snyman at outside centre or even, considering his age now, Pieter Rossouw on the wing.

But if there is one thing that I am certain of it is this - South African fans would be prepared to fight the currency war by crossing the equator or to pay the exhorbitant prices demanded for a passage across the channel from their new homes in England if there was even a hint that the spirit shown at the James Joyce pub in 1997 will be rekindled.