Ken Borland

Captain Phepsi Buthelezi suffered a head knock against Griquas and will miss the Sharks’ Currie Cup game against Western Province in Cape Town on Wednesday, but coach Sean Everitt is confident the eighthman will have recovered in time to join the squad in Johannesburg as they go into lockdown ahead of their match against the British and Irish Lions on July 7 at Ellis Park.

The focus of the Sharks is facing a testing time because they have the crucial match against Western Province to concentrate on, but also the excitement of the game against the British and Irish Lions and all the Covid protocol palaver that goes with that fixture.

“I presume Phepsi will be ready for the Lions, he feels 100% but just didn’t pass all his tests. So he’s nearly there and it wasn’t a serious concussion. Hopefully he’ll be able to join us on Friday when we fly to Johannesburg and go into a six-day quarantine. We are allowed to train on Friday, Monday and Tuesday, and we’ll have PCR tests on Friday, Monday and Wednesday before the game.

“We’ve had no clarification yet on our kickoff time in Cape Town, but I presume it will be moved from 7pm, but that will have no impact on our preparation. Our message to the players this morning was that we need to be squeaky clean and we would like them to treat it as if they are in self-isolation, just coming to the stadium and going home. Otherwise they could miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime against the Lions,” Everitt said on Monday.

The weather in Cape Town is expected to be poor, so it is excellent news for the Sharks that the booming boot of flyhalf Curwin Bosch is back.

“It’s great to have Curwin back. Everyone goes through disappointments in sport, it’s not the first time he’s had it and he’s over what happened with the Springboks. But he’ll want to make sure he puts in a good performance to show Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber that he can step up if needed. He has a huge boot and that could be a deciding factor.

“It’s beautiful weather in Durban today – 28⁰ – so it’s going to be a bit of a change in Cape Town. I see the Junior Boks were playing in torrential rain on a muddy pitch in Stellenbosch, but we have the game-plan for those conditions and we are able to do the kicking game if needed. But we don’t want to bring a one-dimensional approach either,” Everitt said.

Sharks team: Manie Libbok, Werner Kok, Jeremy Ward (c), Marius Louw, Thaakir Abrahams, Curwin Bosch, Jaden Hendrikse, Mpilo Gumede, Thembelani Bholi, James Venter, Hyron Andrews, Ruben van Heerden, Khutha Mchunu, Fez Mbatha, Khwezi Mona. Bench – Dan Jooste, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Wiehahn Herbst, JJ van der Mescht, Reniel Hugo, Dylan Richardson, Grant Williams, Boeta Chamberlain.

Probably only the most ardent of South African rugby fans will know the name Dugald Macdonald, but he is Springbok number 470 having first slipped the famous Green and Gold jersey over his head in a third-floor room of the President Hotel in Sea Point, on 7 June 1974, while a typical Cape Town cold front splattered rain on to the balcony outside.

Macdonald would wear the jersey that had captured his imagination only once in a Test match, and that was actually a fortnight later when he played in the second Test against the British Lions at Loftus Versfeld. That’s because he was a reserve for the first Test at Newlands, and in those days the replacements sat in the stadium because the ‘bench’ was hardly ever used.

In a disastrous 3-0 series loss for the Springboks, he was destined to become one of the unfortunate one-Test wonders as the national selectors panicked and chose 36 different players for the four Tests, the final match in Johannesburg being drawn. According to veteran rugby writer John Bishop, who covered the entire tour, “Dugald should have been there from start to finish, he was one hell of a player. One of those guys who were simply forgotten about in the chaos of the 1974 tour, a powerful number eight with excellent ball skills. He should have been a Bok great”.

Macdonald has just released a book about the whole experience – the series being one of the most traumatic in South African rugby – called Ja-Nee. It is an engrossing look into the past, a study in how the mentality of Springbok rugby was built and how those attitudes still influence it today, but as with all great writing, it also brings applications and warnings for the future.

And it’s not just about rugby either. It provides a fascinating snapshot of White South African life in the 1970s. It is evocative, humorous and thought-provoking all at the same time.

The sun was shining brightly on that midwinter’s day in Pretoria, but Macdonald makes a decent argument for the Springboks not so much being panicky as arrogant. They were convinced that the Lions could not possibly be better than them and a few changes would sort out their scrum and allow them to dominate possession.

It’s a recurring story in our rugby: Back in 1992 when we returned from isolation and expected to still be better than Australia and New Zealand because “the Currie Cup is the strongest competition in the world” and instead lost both Tests comfortably. And then just last week the Bulls travelled from Pretoria to Italy, everyone back home confident that they would be returning from their jaunt with the Rainbow Cup, only to be played off the park by Benetton Treviso.

When South African rugby retreats into the laager mentality, we tend to become dangerously insular whenever we have been cut off from international trends.

Macdonald was not your typical Springbok of the 1970s, he was a city boy, schooled in Cape Town, he was an Oxford Blue and also played for Parma in Italy and Toulouse in France. Some might say paranoid 1970s South Africa was never likely to give him many more than one Test cap.

This broader world view has allowed him to identify an over-reliance on physicality as being a possible albatross around the necks of the current world champions, who have not played since outmuscling England in the World Cup final in Japan in November 2019. While the Springboks have been inactive, the rest of the world has been plotting.

“If we understood the roots of South African rugby then we’ll know why physicality has actually been responsible for many of our defeats. I fear we are winding up for another one because physicality is all the Lions are talking about. But if we don’t have technique and lucidity, physicality can only get you so far.

“Whenever we have just played inklim rugby it has been the beginning of the end, it’s been a problem down the years, and the same thing is growing again. Physicality is great at the right time and in the right place, but so much thought needs to go into it otherwise it’s helluva easy to get carried away. Fortunately we have really good leaders in the game now,” Macdonald told me.

*Ja-Nee is published by Flyleaf Publishing and is widely available in bookstores and online.

“The media are the ones fuelling racism,” is not one of the greetings one expects during an Ahmed Kathrada Foundation webinar to discuss racism in cricket, but that was the opening gambit of new Cricket South Africa independent director Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who is also the head of their transformation committee.

Kula-Ameyaw has led the way in establishing the Cricket for Social Justice and Nation-Building imbizo, which will manage players’ complaints of racism within the system. She raised the ire of many, however, by withdrawing an invitation for CSA acting chief executive Jacques Faul and director of cricket Graeme Smith to attend the first meeting. And she has also revealed some of her own biases in denying the CSA Board has any culpability in the racism issues and blaming the media for them.

“As part of the transformation charter, I have done a situation analysis and the issues are around the White management and that there are no protocols for reporting racism so we are not able to confront issues. The media are the ones fuelling racism and they must be taken into a workshop and taught about the law; affirmative action is a law of redress.

“But the Board have been called ‘Capturers’ – it’s about a certain racial group and excluding others. But I have sent a report to the president of CSA and when we get to the cricket TRC then I will bring evidence. If these people are really journalists then they need to be balanced, because we are not holding them accountable, they are out to push a certain agenda. The criticism of the Board is unfair,” Kula-Ameyaw said when asked about whether there is racism in cricket.

The social entrepreneur and strategist (according to her own website) said CSA’s use of quotas was doing well, but in the same breath blamed the organisation’s executive staff for Black players not playing more often for the Proteas.

“Quotas obviously help because you don’t know what I can do, what my strengths are, if you don’t open the door. But in the international game there are some Black players who have only played five matches in a year while others played 17. The systematic issue was selection and if players complain then they are told they have an attitude and they are buried alive. If you speak out, you are isolated.

“Black players are using the stories of their hardships to define themselves and we will look at every case on its own merits – there are always three stories, mine, yours and the truth. But in terms of accountability, the executive must report to the Board and explain why some Black players only played five times and others get 17 games. Racism exists and I feel so sad this happens in the sporting federation I serve,” Kula-Ameyaw said.

Swys de Bruin endured some teething problems early on in his career as Lions head honcho, but hats off to the well-travelled coach for keeping the faith and his nerve and maintaining the high standards of excellence that have characterised Ellis Park as the team head into their third successive SuperRugby final on Saturday.

Change – especially when it involves losing someone as integral as Johan Ackermann – is often difficult but it is a credit to the smooth systems in place at Ellis Park and De Bruin’s own wisdom and level-headedness that the performance of the Lions in the long run has barely suffered.

It was not as smooth a road to the final this year, which has forced them to make the daunting trip to Christchurch, but reports of the Lions’ demise were greatly exaggerated. Sure, they have had their problems this season, but in a way that makes their achievement all the more impressive because they had to overcome greater challenges to reach the final.

Without their inspirational captain, Warren Whiteley, for most of the season, the Lions also lost their most influential player in Malcolm Marx at a crucial stage of the tournament while Jaco Kriel, a matchwinner, has been ruled out of the entire campaign due to injury. They also had to cope with the departure of integral players like Ruan Ackermann, Faf de Klerk and Akker van der Merwe, while also dealing with the rumours swirling around contracted players wanting to leave and those that did depart mid-season like Rohan Janse van Rensburg.

Apart from still churning out the results against the odds, with so many things mounted against them, the Lions have also still played with flair, which is unsurprising considering how obsessed coach De Bruin is with scoring tries; in a sport which is marred by plenty of cynicism, it is refreshing to have a head coach state so openly, with almost childish naivety, that all he cares about are tries. But that is why most people started playing rugby.

Whatever the result of Saturday’s final, and it would be an upset for the ages if the Lions were to beat the Crusaders in Christchurch, they have done the nation proud. And I don’t agree with the prophets of doom who say it’s now or never for the Lions to win SuperRugby; these are probably the same naysayers who predicted the team would fall off the rails this year already.

The wonderful thing that the culture of success at Ellis Park – and here we must also give the credit to the superb leadership trio of Rudolf Straeuli, Kevin de Klerk and Altmann Allers – has done is to ensure that the Lions are now the team everyone wants to play for. It is the first port of call for the SA Schools star looking to start his professional career.

And the pipeline is working well. Players such as Madosh Tambwe, Marco Jansen van Vuuren, Len Massyn, Hacjivah Dayimani, Gianni Lombard, Jeanluc Cilliers, Wandisile Simelane, Reinhard Nothnagel, Keagan Glade, Asenathi Ntlabakanye, Cristen van Niekerk, Mark Snyman and Yanga Hlalu will be at the vanguard of the Lions’ efforts to remain the undisputed champion franchise in South Africa.

It was not always thus and, as Allers said in his address at the post-match function after the semi-final win over the Waratahs, the last home game of the season, so many of the current Lions stars came to Ellis Park with the reject tags around the neck.

The irony is that so many of those players were shown the door just up the road at Loftus Versfeld, the former SuperRugby champions who used to be the place of choice for young players. The new Bulls coach, John Mitchell, is currently negotiating with the board to fix the mess that has been created there by years of terrible talent identification.

The beneficiaries have been the Lions and so many of the franchise’s stars now carry a new label, the precious tag of being a Springbok.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20180804/282651803301630