Ken Borland

Woodland Kingfisher

by Anthony Stidolph

I am not a man who deliberately courts disaster or intentionally goes looking for bad experiences. By the same token, I am not such a fool as to think the odd mishap won’t occasionally befall me. And when you go travelling with my birding partner Ken, rotten luck does have a habit of following you around.

For example: on a recent trip to Marakele National Park we found ourselves being chased down a narrow, twisting mountain pass in reverse by a very angry elephant who clearly resented our presence in his private domain.  Luckily – I have a feeling some benevolent deity saw fit to intervene – we survived that harrowing encounter. What I did not realise was that more trouble with elephants lay ahead…

From Marakele we had followed a circuitous route that took us to Blouberg Nature Reserve and then cut east along the base of the Soutpansberg range to Punda Maria in North Kruger. We planned to camp the night here and then press on to Pafuri the next day, where we hoped to get in some good birding.

Up until now the weather had been kindly – more spring than summer and I had even found myself wearing a jacket in the evenings and early mornings. In Kruger, however, the hot weather we had been expecting all along finally caught up with us, with the temperature soaring up to 39 degrees. The air around us was heavy and listless and steamy, almost tropical, perhaps hardly surprising since we had crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn some days before.

Eager to be off, I was up early the next day although I had to first wait for Ken to complete his complicated early-morning-ablution rituals. Once he was done with that, we set off northwards through the familiar vastness of flat grassland and mopane trees. On the way we stopped to allow the biggest herd of elephants I have ever seen cross the road. Shortly afterwards we were forced to repeat this exercise for an even bigger herd of buffalo.

The common bird in this neck of the woods – or at least the most vocal – is the Rattling Cisticola. There seemed to be one trilling its silly head off on top of virtually every second tree we passed.

The highly-vocal Rattling Cisticola – Can rub some people up the wrong way

As you draw close to Pafuri, the terrain starts to break up and rearrange itself and you are suddenly confronted by the arresting sight of Baobab Hill, with its commanding views over the Limpopo Valley. In the early days this iconic hill served as both a landmark and sleepover point for the ox-wagons travelling up from Mozambique.

By the time we got to Pafuri the sun was high and blazing. There had obviously been no rain here this season and the grass was pale and dry, although the trees had mostly come out in leaf.

At the crossroads we turned left down the Nyala Drive, which takes you into some wonderfully hilly country before taking a lazy loop back to the main road. Ken likes this less-used drive because, he says, it often throws up unexpected surprises.

There wasn’t much on offing this time around besides the usual suspects – Meves’s Starlings, Arrowmarked Babblers, Whitefronted Bee-eaters and Emeraldspotted Wood Dove. We passed a solitary elephant but he paid us no mind.

On the top of the small, baobab-clad hillock, directly above where the road swings back, is the Thulamela archaeological site, a restored Zimbabwe-type ruin. Unfortunately you can only go up with a guide and because of our tight schedule we did not have time for that.

One of the commanding Baobab trees of northern Kruger.
This painting by Stidy is available for sale. 42×60 stidy@sai.co.za

From the Nyala Drive we crossed back over the main tar road and followed the dirt track that takes you to Crooks Corner, where the brown waters of the Luvuvhu collide with the blue of the Limpopo. The combination of water, sun and rich alluvial soils has led to a proliferation of vegetation along the rivers’ banks so that you drive through a glittering tunnel of Sycamore Figs, Nyala trees, Jackal Berry, Ana and Fever trees.

Crooks’ Corner, where you can get out of your cars, marks the border between South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In the early 1900s this remotest of places gained its moniker and dodgy reputation with gun-runners, fugitives and others on the run from the law, using it as a safe haven because it was easy to hop across the border whenever the police from one country approached.

Distinctly, there was a sense of a frontier on that lazy meandering river, although I don’t think the solitary Saddlebilled Stork fishing in its waters gave a fig where the international boundary lay or as to who held sovereignty over the country he was standing in.

Normally, it feels like you can’t get much further away from civilization than here, but we had chosen a busy weekend to visit so it was like a major thoroughfare with a steady stream of traffic passing through. Many of the visitors didn’t even bother to wind down their windows or get out of their luxury 4x4s because it would mean switching off their air-conditioners. They just drove in, stopped, glanced around and drove out again, leaving me to wonder why they had bothered to come all this way …

Needless to say Ken – who, contrarily, makes it a rule to ALWAYS switch off his air-conditioner when he enters a park because he likes to experience Africa in all its extremes –  and I did get out.

Rich plant life invariably means rich animal and bird life and Pafuri is no exception. In the past the storied riverine forest has provided both of us with some good sightings. It was here I saw my first Gorgeous Bush Shrike, Bohm’s Spinetail and Ayre’s Hawk Eagle. I have also recorded Lesser Jacana, Greencapped Eremomela, Hooded Vulture, Tropical Boubou and the palm-dwelling Lemonbreasted Canary.

This time, we could hear both the Gorgeous Bush Shrike and a melodious Whitebrowed Robin-Chat calling from the depth of a nearby thicket but could not entice either of them out.  Instead we had to make do with a bunch of waders and a noisy party of Trumpeter Hornbills who, I think, were off to join the celebrations in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

It was now well past lunchtime so we doubled back to the Pafuri picnic site on the edge of the Luvuvhu. Feeling somewhat dehydrated, I was desperate for an ice-cold coke but had to wait patiently in queue behind an American who was explaining to the bemused coke seller-cum bird guide – who, I suspect, knew the answer but was too polite to say so – what a turkey is (“It’s a big black bird with a red head”).

At this juncture of its journey the Luvuvhu is always a ruddy brown colour such as might be achieved by mixing cans of tomato soup with cans of chicken soup. There was an enormous crocodile lying directly opposite us, not, as one would expect, by the water’s edge but high up on the bank under some trees. I had a feeling some unsuspecting animal was in for a nasty surprise.

On the way back to Punda Maria, we took the shortcut via Klopperfontein Dam, another place which can throw up some unexpected treats even though the area around the dam has been grazed as smooth as a billiard board. Sure enough, we were rewarded with a wonderful sighting of a Painted Snipe snooping around in the shallows of the nearby stream.

It was getting on for late afternoon by now. Ken consulted Emily, his prissy, admonishing Satnav, and worked out how far we had to go and what time we had to do it in. What neither factored into their calculations was our old nemesis, the elephant.

The first one, which we encountered just after Klopperfontein, kept us waiting for ages, while it feasted on the side of the road, before moving off into the surrounding bush. A little later we passed him siphoning water by the trunk load out of the top of a reservoir.

We ran in to the second one on the home stretch with the hills around Punda Maria in plain sight. Although this bull appeared much more amiable then the one who had chased us down the mountain in Marakele, he had obviously decided he held all the rights to this road.

The whole thing quickly degenerated into a stage farce. We kept reversing and reversing and he kept trundling on towards us. I suspect he was headed for his evening sundowner at the same reservoir where the other elephant was sloshing water around.

One of us had to blink and we did so first. Muttering angrily to ourselves about the beast’s poor road etiquette, we turned around and headed back to the tar and took the much longer route home to Punda Maria.

In Kruger, as in other parks, you are not supposed to arrive in camp after dark, which we now did, finding the gate locked on us. Fortunately, the guard was still at his post but Ken had to use all his silky skills as a sports writer and commentator to try to convince him it wasn’t really our fault. I am not sure he bought our explanation, but he let us through without imposing a fine.

So we drove into camp feeling like a pair of naughty schoolboys who had just been caught bunking …

But we were not done yet. We arrived to a scene of utter devastation – in our absence a troop of baboons had ransacked the place, flattening my tent, breaking its poles and ripping gaping holes in the fly-sheet (even though there was nothing inside but my bedding and clothes), as well as scattering our possessions far and wide.

To tell you the truth I was getting seriously tired of this. I had just bought the tent to replace the one that got ripped by monkeys in Mapungubwe on my last trip which, in turn, I had bought to replace the one that had suffered a similar fate at the hands of baboons when I attended a wedding in De Hoop Nature Reserve in the Western Cape. At the rate I was getting through tents, it would have been cheaper to have just booked into a luxury lodge!

I am not sure what one does about this menace. The problem is both monkeys and baboons have become habituated to both human beings and human beings’ food.

We did discover afterwards that there was supposed to be a guard on duty to stop these opportunistic raids but, even though the campsite was virtually booked out, he had decided to take the Sunday off …

I was still sulking about my poor tent the next morning when we drove out of the gate, destination Mapungubwe. There to wish us on our way was the scruffiest Ground Hornbill I have ever seen. It flew up into a tree from where it regarded us quizzically through its girlishly-long eyelashes.

For some reason the sight of that lugubrious bird, peering around its branch, cheered me up no end. It made me realise that on the Richter Scale of Travel Disasters we had got off relatively lightly compared to what other great explorers, like David Livingstone or Scott’s Antarctic expedition, had been forced to endure…

ANTHONY STIDOLPH

Lions hooker Malcolm Marx on the rampage once again. Photo by Marcel Sigg, runridedive.com

When the ACT Brumbies’ style of play dominated rugby in the early 2000s there were many pseudonyms for what they were doing – structured rugby, expansive rugby, multiphase play, all set up by skilful ball-carriers.

The Jaguares reminded me a bit of that multiphase play at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon as they valiantly held on to the ball for phase-after-phase. But the game has moved on since the glory days of Gregan, Larkham and Finegan and these days teams trust their defences to hold out for long periods, eventually forcing the error or a one-off runner that is vulnerable to the breakdown steal.

We saw it in the Crusaders’ victory over the Sharks in the other SuperRugby quarterfinal featuring a South African side earlier in the day, and the Lions’ defence was the biggest factor in their 40-23 win over the Jaguares.

As the Jaguares pushed and prodded with more determination, so the Lions just worked harder and with more physicality in defence, simply not allowing the Argentinians to get their game going. Hooker Malcolm Marx led the way with vital turnovers, but Marnus Schoeman also contributed valuably and Kwagga Smith was also a presence at the breakdown.

“Collectively it was a massive effort and you have to give credit for all the turnovers to the guy who makes the tackle as well because he provides the opportunity. A guy like Malcolm is then just impossible to shift, Kwagga made one or two steals as well and Marnus was excellent when he came on. At stages the Jaguares kept the ball for a long time, but we showed good patience on defence,” Lions captain Warren Whiteley said after his team had clinched their third successive SuperRugby semifinal at home.

Captain Warren Whiteley epitomises the Lions defence with this hit on Agustin Creevy. Photo by Marcel Sigg, runridedive.com

The Jaguares are certainly a force to be reckoned with going forward in SuperRugby, as they showed in the third quarter when they came from 9-24 down at the break to close to 23-27.

They were piling on the pressure, but Marx won three turnover penalties and those are the crucial interventions which win knockout games, with coach Swys de Bruin talking afterwards about “great defence at the right times”.

Jaguares coach Mario Ledesma spoke afterwards about how disappointing it was to concede three “soft” tries in the first half, but the Lions are a clever, innovative side on attack, able to try different things and generally pretty clinical.

All three of the tries came from different kicks: An Elton Jantjies crosskick found wing Ruan Combrinck with pinpoint precision for the first try; centre Harold Vorster followed lovely sleight of hand with a clever kick through that became even more effective thanks to the pace of Aphiwe Dyantyi getting there first to hack through and allow Vorster to score after the Jaguares made a mess of the clean-up operation; and a little dink over the top by flyhalf Jantjies was gathered by scrumhalf Gonzalo Bertranou, but his loose pass was immediately intercepted by Marx, who roared away from the 10m line for the try.

The Lions were cruising with a 24-9 halftime lead, but the admirable Jaguares were not done yet though as Bautista Delguy used his quick feet to score a fine try down the right wing two minutes after the break, and seven minutes later the visitors scored again as flank Pablo Matera crashed over. It was not the best grubber kick by the Lions that had given them broken-play possession.

Flank Cyle Brink, after a barnstorming first half, did not come out for the second half due to a shoulder ‘stinger’, but it was not a problem for the Lions as his replacement, Schoeman, played with tremendous industry. He showed terrific tenacity in the build-up to Andries Coetzee’s try as the fullback wriggled through a couple of tackles.

Lions flank Cyle Brink on another storming run. Photo by Marcel Sigg, runridedive.com

A typically combative Marnus Schoeman. Photo by Marcel Sigg, runridedive.com

Being a knockout game, coach De Bruin had deemed shots at goal acceptable and Jantjies, who produced a polished performance that included a seven-from-seven success rate from the tee, then slotted a sweetly-struck drop goal to take the Lions’ buffer to two converted tries (37-23).

The seventh successful kick at goal by Jantjies was the penalty that completed the scoring with five minutes remaining, confirming that they will host the Waratahs at 3pm next Saturday in the semifinals.

The other huge positive for the Lions was the tremendous dominance of their scrum. The number of set-pieces was relatively low, but whenever the home side needed it, their scrum won them penalties or gave them strong front-foot ball.

When Australia arrived in South Africa for their four-Test series, it was billed as the battle of the bowling attacks, and it was the Proteas who had the gas required to take 80 wickets, while the tourists could claim just 70 wickets as they went down 3-1.

So just how did South Africa manage to bowl Australia out in all eight innings of the series?

“Firstly, you’ve got to have good fast bowlers and we’re lucky that we do, and they’re good in any conditions. And then you add Keshav Maharaj to the mix and Lungi Ngidi came in and made his mark as well. There were guys putting their hand up all the time.

“Kagiso Rabada was Man of the Series, but I was especially pleased with Vernon Philander. I set him a challenge at the start of the series and he exceeded it, he bowled the overs and got the wickets, so I’m delighted for him. It’s a shame to see Morne Morkel go with the way he’s bowling at the moment, he’s a handful for batsmen,” Proteas coach Ottis Gibson said.

The solid batting performance was also down to the unit as a whole performing, with four different batsmen getting centuries.

Gibson said he was also especially pleased by the way his team handled the controversies and enmity that would burn through the series, until Australia arrived at the Wanderers a beaten side.

“One thing I focus on all the time is keeping the focus on the cricket. It was disappointing that after every game the story was never about the cricket. We lost the first Test badly and we needed a strong statement and we did that. But still our performance didn’t take centre stage, even though we had played really well.

“They were playing under the whole pressure of not winning a series against Australia here since readmission, fixing that was our goal and focus, and after not being at our best in Durban, the guys said it’s okay, there are three Tests left. It was a fantastic performance, with youngsters Aiden Markram and Kagiso Rabada leading the batting and bowling, but when we needed to see the experienced players come through, they did that. We performed across the board,” Gibson said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20180405/282325385537518

It is really exciting to have rugby starting again in the Southern Hemisphere this weekend and what I’m really looking forward to is having a traditional South African Saturday afternoon braai here while watching the rugby, something I won’t be getting in freezing Japan when I return there.

SuperRugby is a ‘new’ competition this year with 18 teams having been cut to 15, supposedly to ensure more closer contests and greater competitiveness. But I do have my reservations because SuperRugby must be the only competition in the world where over 50% of the competing teams make the playoffs, apart from the Currie Cup of course!

Despite eight teams making it through to the quarterfinals, there are clearly only a few places up for grabs, and you can pretty much see already the teams that aren’t going to make it – the Melbourne Rebels, Queensland Reds, Sunwolves, Jaguares and one New Zealand side.

I would say the Kiwi team to miss out will probably be the Chiefs because they are under new management and have lost some massive names – Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Liam Messam, Michael Leitch and most importantly coach Dave Rennie.

And then there will be two South African sides that miss out. I’m pessimistic about our chances because of our SuperRugby record in New Zealand over the last six years, which is nothing to brag about. We can beat New Zealand teams in South Africa, but it is a whole different kettle of fish doing it away from home – and those are the points you have to get in order to succeed in SuperRugby.

The other thing about the rule that eight out of 15 teams qualify for the knockout rounds is that it makes bonus points very necessary for teams to pick up, so it has been pleasing to see the stated attacking intent of our franchises. But because you only get a bonus point by finishing three clear tries ahead of your opponents, that means teams have to defend as well.

In terms of the South African teams, there have been many changes in coaching set-up.

The Bulls have a fresh coaching team and I know they have been working hard and it will be interesting to see how they go. Having been to training at Loftus Versfeld, they certainly look in good shape, for which you have to credit the conditioning staff and John Mitchell.

The Bulls do have certain strengths, especially at hooker and their lock pairings, and the spine of their team is quite strong – hooker, the locks, eighthman, scrumhalf, flyhalf and fullback all look good. I suppose we can be not entirely sure about scrumhalf because Ivan van Zyl and Embrose Papier have got just two SuperRugby appearances between them. How those two cope with the step up to SuperRugby will be crucial; they are both certainly talented and this is now their chance and their time. These days scrumhalf is a young man’s position because it’s all about energy and work-rate.

The Bulls have a very tough start to the competition and how they get through that will be key. They play three New Zealand teams and the Lions in their first five games and if they can come through that with a positive ledger then they will really be contenders.

The Stormers have obviously lost a lot of quality centres and the injuries around their locks is also a concern. It’s interesting to see the changing roles of their coaching staff  and how that works out.

The Stormers were certainly a real handful in Cape Town last year with their offloading game and the way they scored tries. They will now have even more danger on the wings with the players they’ve added, but the big question mark will be how they defend away from home.

They obviously have problems at flyhalf after losing their lynchpin from last year in Robert du Preez, who really made a difference in the Currie Cup final with his control and ability to dictate field position, as well as his immaculate goal-kicking.

Unfortunately the Stormers have a real draw from hell after being in relatively easy Super 18 pools, but if they get a good start then they obviously can be playoff contenders.

The Sharks have also made changes to their coaching set-up. Dick Muir has come back to Durban and they are obviously not going to die wondering in terms of attack.

They have also made some astute signings like Du Preez and Makazole Mapimpi, and with Japanese players like Philip van der Walt and Andre Esterhuizen coming back, they should certainly be a handful. It’s also going to be interesting to watch Thomas du Toit’s move to tighthead after the Sharks scrum was demolished by Western Province in the Currie Cup final.

The Sharks do have a quality, big forward pack and if they keep them all fit and start well (they have a couple of nice games at home early on), that should bear them in good stead.

The Lions have also undergone a change in coaching staff, making appointments from within the franchise and giving guys their first chance at SuperRugby level, although Swys de Bruin has been there through all their recent success. It will be interesting to see how he steps up to being head coach and how well the Lions ride the loss of the Ackermanns, father and son.

The Lions’ strength is in their centres, with Lionel Mapoe, Harold Vorster and Rohan Janse van Rensburg certainly a quality trio. How the Lions accommodate all three of them through the season will be interesting.

The key for the Lions is that the spine of their team are now all seasoned Test players – Andries Coetzee, Elton Jantjies, Ross Cronje, Warren Whiteley and Malcolm Marx – so their core is still very strong.

It’s vital that they make a good start and they have always had strong set-pieces, so it will also be interesting to see how that evolves under new forwards coach Phillip Lemmer because the Lions have always scored a lot of tries through driving mauls and lineout special plays. Will that strength still be there?

The Sunwolves will be in action next week and they will certainly be stronger this year, they have a whole host of foreign players and the rest are basically the Japan national squad working towards the next World Cup. They are also under the former Highlanders pairing of Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown, who are very experienced SuperRugby coaches.

Once again the Kiwi franchises are the ones to beat, but obviously the British Lions’ success in New Zealand in June gave a little blueprint to teams in terms of how to succeed over there. You need a strong pack of forwards, good set-pieces to put them under pressure, a rush-defence to deny their playmakers time on the ball and extremely accurate box-kicking from scrumhalf because that is the hardest kick to counter-attack from because of the chase.

John McFarland is the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. Before that, McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

T