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James Small: A colourful, passionate character who inspired so much pleasure

rugby11 July 2019 07:44| © Cycle Lab
By:JJ Harmse
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The way you perceive the individual people you encounter in your journey through life can often be determined by a single incident, one moment where you get a glimpse of what lies within them, when the facades and the mirrors are removed.

The moment that determined that through the rest of his often controversial playing career, no matter how wrong he may sometimes have seemed, I somehow always found a way to come up for James Small happened in France in 1992.

Small was just 23 then. It was his first Springbok tour, and the national squad’s first post-isolation tour. I was covering it for what was then the South African morning group of newspapers. We spent five weeks in France followed by two weeks in England.

I was based in Durban back then and Small was still playing for Transvaal in 1992 so we didn’t know each other that well, but our mutual dislike for flying saw us spending time together as we both sought alternative modes of transport to get from Beziers to Paris ahead of the second test match.

The driver of the car was Chris Tau, a well known Romanian journalist living in France who later went on to work for the IRB, as World Rugby was known until relatively recently. Chris was good at a lot of things, but driving wasn’t his forte. Well, maybe he’s a very good driver, for perhaps you have to be if you continually manage to get away with driving long distance at high speeds with your head mostly directed at your fellow passengers rather than at the road in front of you.

A few hours into that trip we stopped for petrol and Tau left myself and Small sitting in the car while he popped into the grocery store to buy a cool drink.

“Jeepers, haven’t we made the wrong decision,” said James, “we would have been far safer flying.”

We did get to Paris, obviously, but not before Small had revealed a side of himself that stuck with me. Somewhere along that road Eric Clapton’s song, Tears in Heaven, written in distress following the death of Clapton’s four year old son Conor, who fell to his death from the 53rd floor of a New York skyscraper in 1991, was played on the car radio.

Small was by then sitting in the back seat and I had moved to the front. He genuinely was scared of Chris’ driving (sorry Chris if you reading this, but thanks for the lift anyway). For some reason I looked back while the song was playing. Small was completely overcome with emotion, tears pouring down his cheeks.

TOO EMOTIONAL

Later on during the journey, among the many personal things we discussed, he spoke about his love for kids. And that soft side to him was clearly evident to see when a few months later he moved to Durban to play for Natal and he eagerly embraced any occasion that revolved around the outreach to kids.

When fellow players spoke about Small they’d often say that he was too emotional and therefore too passionate for his own good. It is what led him into trouble on the playing field probably more times than he would have liked. He had a colourful career both on the field and off it, but the soft side to him might just have set the narrative for his career.

Let me explain. I know Small wasn’t a perfect human being - who is? - and he knew that too. He didn’t hide from his flaws when just over a month ago I met him in Durban for what I would imagine might have been his last interview with a media person. He is one of several subjects in a book I am writing on South African rugby issues seen through the eyes of former Springboks.

He was flying back to Johannesburg later in the afternoon. Those who have a fear of flying will relate to his need to sink a few cold beers. They do help you forget you are moving through the air 39 000 feet above the ground in a metal box.

It isn’t possible to cover someone’s entire life story in a two hour interview but in delving back what became quite clear was the deep negative impact on Small of the treatment he was subjected to when he first got selected for Transvaal as an 18 year old kid out of Wits University.

TEAMMATE TERROR

“I played against Northern Transvaal at the age of 18 and two weeks. Currie Cup games were like test matches and that was a top Currie Cup game, there might have been 50 000 people there,” recalled Small.

“But it wasn’t a pleasant experience for me, for my own teammates were just continually on my case. It was an Afrikaans dominated environment and there was a weird rugby culture back then. You’d think they would welcome this young kid with open arms and try and make me feel comfortable, help the kid and show him the ropes. But they did the exact opposite.

“Even when you are young they don’t like you if you are English speaking, but when you are young with an earring and a tattoo, there was no ways they were going to let me get away with that. The initiation was shit and there were several of them, they looked for any excuse to bliksem me… It seemed to be the highlight of their weekend to see me suffer.

“I didn’t like my teammates, so I played constantly angry and I played for myself. It set the tone for my own notoriety, and that separated me even further from the rest. Maybe if people had treated me a bit differently I might have behaved a bit differently. I am not looking for an excuse. Not ever. I know I did a lot of things wrong in my career. But if you are welcomed with open arms and are treated like a human being, then you’d go differently. I was just angry all the time and it didn’t serve me well because I got into a lot of shit.

“A lot of that was detrimental to me later in my career and at the end of my career, because I kept that chip and that anger throughout my career and I should have just let it go. I should have just played and put that shit out of my mind."

BREAKING RECORDS

Small was quite self-deprecating in the interview. For instance, he said he didn’t believe he was a good rugby player, not by international standards anyway, that he was just lucky that there were no other good South African wings playing at the time he was playing. He said that Kitch Christie selected him because he had to, but probably wished there was someone else he could go for in the No 14 jersey.

“You must understand that Kitch’s idea of a right wing was Ray Mort. Those are big shoes to fill. Ray was disciplined, he was strong, that’s not me brother. Especially not for that No 14 jersey, when Kitch thought about the No 14 he had Ray Mordt in his mind. Don’t I wish I was Ray Mordt. Doesn’t every supporter wish their team has Ray Mordt in it?”

But Small was talking bollocks there. He played 47 times for his country, and for a while that was a record number of caps. He also scored 20 tries, and broke Danie Gerber’s record when he scored in his last test, which was against Scotland in Edinburgh during Nick Mallett’s first tour as Springbok coach in 1997.

You don’t break records, you don’t play 47 tests if you are not up to it as an international player, particularly not in those days when tests were fewer and it was also prior to the days when you could accumulate 50 tests by being an impact sub off the bench.

In our interview all Small could remember about his first test in the green and gold, the isolation breaking comeback test against the All Blacks at Ellis Park, was the incident that was highlighted by his captain Naas Botha to the media afterwards.

“All I can remember about that game is dropping the ball with an open line in front of me and Naas telling everyone that it was the difference between the teams.”

But he must have done something right in that game for he was selected for the next test, and the one after that, and the one after that… In fact there was only one time that Small was ever left out of the Bok side during his career for reasons other than suspension or being disciplined by team management.

He admitted that happened too often, and one of his eternal regrets was that it cost him the honour of reaching the 50 test milestone. But he was only ever dropped once, and that was for one test by a very confused Carel du Plessis during the dark days of 1997 and the series loss to the British and Irish Lions.

LOMU, AND THE ANTHEM

And although he was very lippy on the field, both to opponents and referees, something he said came from his soccer background, he was highly respected and also liked by opponents. One of those was Va’aiga Tuigemala, who he faced in his first test and who he rated as the most fearsome rival he ever marked on the rugby field, even more scary than the legendary Jonah Lomu.

“I must be honest, Va’aiga was more frightening than Jonah. He was a proper rugby player. Not that Jonah wasn’t, but Jonah had size, there was somewhere you could grab onto. Inga was five foot 10 and he ran with his knees high.

“A weird thing kept happening before I played against him. He would phone me on the Friday night before a test match and say ‘Hey James, good luck tomorrow bro, I hope you play well’. I would be sitting in a dinner with the team and someone would come in and call me out of it and tell me there was a call for me. That was very cool, it was a testimony to the man and the culture.”

Typically, Small gave most of the credit for keeping the outsized Lomu in check in the 1995 World Cup final to teammates Japie Mulder and Joost van der Westhuizen, but like all of the players who played that day, being part of that epic triumph was the seminal moment that will stand out for his fans.

“It was a Biblical experience, a whole lot of things just came together in an unforgettable month where we felt we really made a difference to the country,” was how he recalled it.

For Small the high point not only of that World Cup, but of every game he played for the Springboks, was the singing of the national anthem.

“The anthem and the build-up is the biggest privilege you get as an international rugby player. No other sport does theatre like rugby does. A game is a game. You can stuff it up, you can be not good enough, and I will say it again, I don’t think I was good enough. And you can be a Ruben Kruger, who was consumed by every moment in that environment, or you could be a fly on the wall, which I often felt I was.

“But that moment, that singing of the anthem, that is the most important moment of all. Because the rest is slave to chance, the ball can bounce, you can make a tackle, you can miss a tackle. The results can change, they can fluctuate, but that moment standing there, that’s the core of a rugby player, it all sits in that moment.

“My 9-year-old son sits in that moment, he aspires to that moment. All the danger he puts himself in, and everyone is aware of just how dangerous the sport is, he is prepared to sacrifice that fear to live that moment. That doesn’t exist in other sports. In a very physical game among really hard men that is a very very precious precious and special thing.

“I ended up training harder because of that. What goes through your mind when you singing that anthem? You think of all the special people along the way. It’s almost like your life flashes before your eyes.

“It’s such a big high, especially to do that at a World Cup final. Time passes as segments. Your whole life rolls out in front of you. We don’t allow ourselves that opportunity in life generally, but to have a sport that offers you that opportunity is a very special thing.”

It is indeed. Small, or Bushy as he was known by his mates, died way too young, but he got the privilege of experiencing something only a minute number of people get to live through.

After Small left for the airport on that Monday afternoon when I interviewed him I sat behind in the coffee shop contemplating life. I was summoned over by a group of wide eyed people sitting at another table.

“Excuse us, but was that James Small?”

“It was indeed.”

“He was one heck of a rugby player and such a character. He gave us such pleasure.”

He did indeed. Rest in Peace James.

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