Ken Borland

The great Bruce Springsteen sings about the bittersweet feelings of joy and dismay when returning to one’s roots in his 1985 hit My Home Town and Springbok assistant coach Mzwandile Stick was probably experiencing similar mixed emotions in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) on Friday.

Stick is back in his birthplace with the Springbok team preparing for their Rugby Championship opener against Argentina at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on Saturday, but the build-up to the big Test match, with the home team fresh off their stirring win over the British and Irish Lions, is strangely muted. Simply because of the Covid restrictions under which sport is now played.

“To be honest, I’ve been a bit down this week because it’s the first time I’ve come to PE and not even been able to visit my family. We know how passionate supporters are here, they are big Springbok supporters. This is a very special place for me and a packed stadium on Saturday would have been nice.

“We are all very passionate about the Eastern Cape, they gave me my platform, I am who I am because of this place. And we know there is a lot of potential here and we just have to make sure we keep on looking after it. Otherwise there has not been much difference in our preparation for Argentina, we are sticking to our routine and the process has not changed,” Stick, a former IRB Sevens World Series winning captain, said on Friday.

In terms of preparation for Saturday’s Test, the new 50/22 trial law that allows a team to throw into the lineout if they kick from their own half indirectly into touch in the opposition 22, is not something they have really had time to incorporate into their game-plan.

“It was only brought in this week so we won’t be changing much. But with all the kickers in our team it does give us opportunities. Frans Steyn, for example, has a massive boot that maybe we can use. But it does not change our plan much,” Stick said.

Speaking of Steyn, the backline coach said it will be important on Saturday for the likes of the double World Cup winner and fellow seniors Elton Jantjies, Jesse Kriel and Cobus Reinach to share their experience with a new-look back three.

“The key has been getting a balance in the backline. There are guys who have been there for a while – Cobus, Elton, Frans and Jesse – they are experienced and we know they have done it before. But the back three have worked very hard. We know what Sbu Nkosi can do, he has a bit of x-factor; Aphelele Fassi is a youngster who has played well for the Sharks and had a couple of very good touches against Georgia; and Damian Willemse is starting to mature in his game, he does the basics very well.

“One of our goals is building strong depth, whenever we get the opportunity we will give some guys the chance to recover and others the chance to play. It’s going to be tough against the strongest Argentina team but I have no doubt they are up to the challenge,” Stick said.

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 Springboks still have 20 of the 23 players (presuming Duane Vermeulen will be unavailable until the closing stages of the Lions series) who featured in the 2019 World Cup final available as they return to international action. So there is probably not much scope for fresh faces to burst on to the scene, but there are still opportunities for some players to show they can be trustworthy regulars in the couple of years leading into the next World Cup.

Trevor Nyakane: The 32-year-old suffered the misfortune of being injured in the first week of the 2019 World Cup and missed out on the final. One of seven props in the squad, the Bulls star will want to return to his pre-eminent place in the tighthead pecking order alongside Frans Malherbe and will need to see off the claims of Vincent Koch, who came off the bench early in the second half of the World Cup final, and the versatile pairing of Thomas du Toit and Coenie Oosthuzen, who can both be considered ‘swing props’.

But Nyakane says he is up for the challenge – “This is a completely different environment, there’s less room for error and all the players are top-quality. So you need to step up to that level, make it as hard as possible when it comes to selection, give them a headache when it comes to picking, Healthy competition Is good.”

Marco van Staden: The Bulls No.6 is sometimes described as a ‘typical fetcher who gives away lots of penalties’, but this is misleading because Van Staden has contributed in so many different aspects of play for the South African pace-setters – while he has conceded 11 penalties in the Rainbow Cup and won several turnovers, he has also won 91% of the tackles he was called to make and gains 2.1 metres per ball-carry. So he is tending towards the sort of hybrid flank that could be very useful to Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber’s replacements bench.

Rynhardt Elstadt: When people think of the 31-year-old Toulouse star, they have a picture of a hugely physical loose forward making big carries and bashing away on the gain-line. But Elstadt has developed his game at the European champions and has also become a trustworthy lineout forward. With locks Lood de Jager and RG Snyman both in doubt due to injury concerns, Elstadt has the chance to become a regular in the Springbok 23 particularly because of his utility value.

“For us, coming from this side of the world, we can have a bit more of a contribution, I hope. We have played a bit more rugby up in the northern hemisphere than the guys in the south. They have only been playing against each other, whereas we have played a lot against the guys in the Premiership and Pro14 who will be on the Lions tour. We have got quite a good feeling about it, I am really amped to be going and joining the boys and see if we can’t go and win another title,” Elstadt told the Talking Rugby Union website this week.

The Sharks have to beat the Bulls and get a bonus point at Kings Park on Saturday if they are to be in the Rainbow Cup final, which means they have to score four tries. That will probably mean they will try to play an even quicker game against the Currie Cup champions, but captain Lukhanyo Am said on Tuesday that they also have to be smart in how they play.

If the Bulls score four tries and get a bonus point then it probably won’t matter who wins the game because their points difference is so much better than the Sharks that the home team would need to beat them by 34 points just to draw level. So Am’s charges can’t just throw caution to the wind and go all-out trying to just score as many tries as possible.

“We’re not going to shy away from our DNA, but the Bulls present a different threat to the Lions and we need to try and find the balance between running, flashy rugby and smart, tactical rugby on the right side of the field. We’ll want to bring energy and continuity and we’ll be trying our best to get into the final,” Am said on Tuesday.

This will be the last time the likes of Am, Makazole Mapimpi and Siya Kolisi will be playing for the Sharks until the end of the chockablock Springbok schedule towards the end of the year. The Sharks do, however, have nine players in the extended Springbok squad and their clash with the dominant force in domestic rugby for the last year will be thrilling.

*Perhaps the biggest surprise after the Sharks officially confirmed on Tuesday that Stormers hooker Bongi Mbonambi will be joining them at the end of the Lions tour was that the Springbok star had held out for so long before signing his new contract.

Mbonambi was already poised to join the Sharks back in March, when his Roc Nation stablemate Kolisi had already been unveiled as a key signing for the Durban franchise.

The talented 21-year-old Fez Mbatha has been the Sharks’ first-choice hooker recently, but Kerron van Vuuren and part-time flank Dylan Richardson have also had plenty of time in the middle of the front row. Former Maties and SA U20 hooker Dan Jooste is also under contract at Kings Park.