Why they've become South African

Quite a few South Africans who were there have remarked on how well the Springboks were received in Cardiff in the buildup to and during last weekend’s clash with Wales.

There might have been a simple explanation for this: For many Welshmen, supporting the team playing against the Springboks might have seemed a bit strange. Apparently on the day of the World Cup final, Cardiff was awash with Springbok jerseys, all worn by Welsh people who wanted to see England get beaten.

And I met a couple of England supporters during my few days in Cardiff who were either dressed in Springbok jerseys or interested in finding out where they could be found. This was because English people living in Wales wanted to get the Welsh back for supporting the Springboks on 20 October.

“I was so irritated going into work in Cardiff on the Monday after the final. There were all these Welsh people sitting their gloating and mocking me because ‘their’ team had won,” said one.

“I told them they were all idiots because since when were they suddenly all South Africans. I reminded them that they were actually Welsh and that their team got beaten by Fiji and failed to make the World Cup quarterfinals. So I am definitely looking for a Bok jersey today, and I am going to wear it with pride.”

What all of this does is drum home the massive positive spin-off for the Bok brand of winning the World Cup. No-one would have been buying French, All Black or Puma jerseys on the day of the final, and Brian Moore, the former England hooker, indirectly referred to the cache that the Boks now have in his column in The Daily Telegraph.

“There has been so much meaningless international rugby in the past few years that, had the visitors not been the new world champions, I don’t think anyone would have given a monkeys,” wrote Moore.

Like most of the other former players and professional sports writers offering their opinion on the game, Moore was complimentary towards the Bok performance, saying that they were a classy unit which had been way too good for Wales even though they had never engaged anything more than second gear.

Stephen Jones of The Sunday Times was even more positive, starting his match report by saying that on the early evidence that the Boks were definitely going to defend their title with more skill and class than England ever came close to doing, and ending it by saying that the Boks played and behaved like champions.

It’s all so markedly different to just a few years ago, when the Boks were languishing and when the embarrassment that was the Twickenham match against England in 2002 (53-3 and a thuggish Bok approach) was still so fresh in English minds.

If foreign people are starting to wear the Bok jersey it must mean that the South African national team is doing something right.

The Boks were lauded by several writers for their behaviour during the World Cup, and if the main part of Jake White’s legacy is a winning culture, then it is also the grace and humility that his winning team showed at the IRB Awards ceremony the day after the final.

The Boks used to be known as arrogant, undisciplined, boorish and boring.

They are anything but that now, and the five tries they scored at the Millennium Stadium inspired even those remaining doubtful critics to wax on about their potential to be not just a winning side, but also a stylish one.

White vacates his position after the weekend following a year in which the Boks won 14 of their 17 test matches. That is already impressive before we even note that two of those defeats came in Tri-Nations matches in Australasia where the Boks were under-strength.

The manner of his departure has also left the overseas media in little doubt about who the bad guys in South African rugby are, with the expressions such as “political pygmies” being used to describe the South African administration in columns and comment pieces.

It seems everyone knows who the bad guys are. If the Boks lose the plot from here, and the next coach makes a botch-up of a team that he will have inherited and which doesn’t need any fixing, the blame will all head in one direction.