It may come across as a silly contradiction but “Ole! Ole! Ole!” to Rassie Erasmus for calling for spectators at Saturday’s Test between the Springboks and the All Blacks at Ellis Park to respect the Haka.

The Haka has deep cultural and historic significance to New Zealanders and for too long South African crowds, especially those at Ellis Park, have tried to drown it out by chanting the Spanish bullfighting refrain that snuck into local rugby during the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

The last time the two great rivals met at Ellis Park, in 2024, this ugliness reached a nadir when “Ole!” rang out, an Emirates airliner made a low pass, fireworks were set off and the DJ continued drive up the decibels as the All Blacks began what in Māori culture is more a challenge than the war dance it is often depicted as.

So rude and crass was the crowd’s behaviour, coupled to the stadium’s crude management and timing of the event, that SA Rugby issued a formal apology to New Zealand.

The Māori haka is a source of pride for all New Zealanders. It is performed all around the world, most famously by the All Blacks and the New Zealand Defence Force.

Traditionally, Haka was a way to welcome and entertain visiting tribes, but it also served to prepare warriors before heading into battle. It was a show of physical prowess but also an embodiment of cultural pride, strength and unity. It is deeply seated in ancient rituals that might simply have been forgotten had it not become emblematic of the All Blacks.

The scorn it evokes among many South African fans is puzzling for the Springbok players themselves respect it, dream of one day facing a Haka, and would be deeply disappointed if it were not performed before a Test match they were involved in.

In 1981 during the “Flour Bomb” tour to New Zealand I was able to learn a little about the ancient rituals performed by that country’s first settlers and in 1994 I actually faced a Haka when, standing off to the side, we watched as manager Jannie Engelbrecht, captain Francois Pienaar and their team were met by a Maori warrior performing a welcoming Haka when they visited a Marae (the name given to settlements where various tribes practice their traditions, the Māori language is spoken and cultural education is passed on) near Lake Taupo in the North Island.

According to Māori tradition, the Haka comes from Tānerore, the son of the sun god Tama-nui-te-rā and Hine-raumati (the summer goddess). The quivering air on hot summer days represents Tānerore’s dance, which inspired the trembling hand gesture (wiri) seen in the Haka.

A Haka is performed for many social functions—including welcomes, celebrations, weddings, funerals and honouring guests.

An elder at the Marae we visited explained that the bulging eyes and sticking out of tongues in performing a Haka harked back to the defensive acts of lizards (tuatara which are endemic to NZ) and birds.

The most famous Haka, thanks to the All Blacks, is Ka Mate, composed around 1820 by the Ngāti Toa war chief Te Rauparaha. It celebrates life over death following Te Rauparaha’s narrow escape from rival tribes. Ka Mate begins with ‘ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora’, which translates to ‘I die, I die, I live, I live.’

It hasn’t always been that the Haka is integral to the start of an All Blacks rugby Test match and there were times the New Zealanders allowed the underlying threat of aggression to go too far; a development directly linked to the Springboks.

The All Blacks’ other Haka was created specifically for a Springbok match. Called Kapa O Pango and written for the All Blacks by Māori cultural expert Derek Lardelli to reflect the identity, passion and mana (spirit) of the team in black it was unveiled ahead of a Springbok Test at Carisbrook in Dunedin in 2005.

Led for the first time by captain Tana Umaga (now the AB’s defence coach) Kapa O Pango ended with a throat-slitting action that triggered an international outcry. Subsequently it was said that final move was meant to be “from the heart across the silver fern,” but too often players strayed toward the uglier interpretation.

The tradition of performing a Haka began with the 1888–1889 New Zealand Native (you read that right) football team tour to Britain and was adopted permanently by the All Blacks on their first tour to the UK in 1905.

It is estimated that a Haka has been part of some three-quarters of All Black tests. It was usually done on overseas tours, but with a lack of coordination and element of embarrassment because players lacked training and understanding of the words and actions.

Legendary All Blacks captain Wayne ‘Buck’ Shelford is credited with transforming the Haka from a casual, stultified routine into a fierce, unified war dance that restored its cultural pride and mana.

During a tour of Argentina in 1985, Shelford and fellow Māori player Hika Reid decided that the team must perform the Haka properly or stop doing it altogether. He demanded 100% commitment from players and management, insisting everyone learn by heart the correct words, timing and aggressive posture.

By treating it as a genuine challenge and warrior’s display rather than a novelty act, Shelford gave the performance its modern gravity and power and it became an awe-inspiring fixture of All Blacks Test matches starting with the victorious 1987 Rugby World Cup campaign.

It has often been suggested, mostly in the English Press, that the Haka should be banned because it gives the All Blacks an unfair psychological advantage, but in my conversations with many Springboks over the years they in fact say they love facing it and draw inspiration from it.

Some notable figures in local sport, apart from Rassie, have also called for the Haka to be given its due respect over the next three Saturdays. Hammer out our anthem but please be silent when Ardie Savea leads his men in black into a huddle shortly before kick-off.

And while on the subject of respect. The All Blacks obviously have huge support in South Africa (as evidenced by their welcome in Cape Town and during the match against the Stormers) and that’s fine – but for one jarring aspect.

The All Blacks and all New Zealanders have a huge regard and affinity to their jersey and their badge. They wear it with dignity and pride and in my dealings with Kiwis courtesy and chivalry is a national trait.

But that, sadly, has not been evident in the behaviour of many locals who have bought and wear All Black jerseys but have displayed loud and invasive crudity to the detriment of others. These All Blacks have doubtless been touched by the love, but I doubt that they approve of provocative behaviour committed in their name.

I appeal to the Cape Crusaders (the nickname given to South African All Black supporters) and fans wanting to barrack the Haka to take a leaf from the ethos of being an All Black.

First described to me during the visit by Sean Fitzpatrick’s side in 1996 and again by subsequent teams led by the like of Taine Randall, Todd Blackadder and Richie McCaw each player is reminded that “the jersey is not mine to keep; I am merely keeping it in good order for the next man to wear it,” and at all times try to be open, honest, respectful, a team man and hold yourself to high standards of mannerly behaviour (or words to that effect).

This mantra of the All Blacks is summed up in a pithy phrase: “Don’t be a dick.”

FOOTNOTE: Ancient rites involving choreographed movement and chants are deeply imbedded in Polynesian culture. Fijians perform their cibi (pronounced thimbi); the Samoans the siva tau and the Tongans the sipi tau, considered to be the most aggressive of the calls to battle. At different times the Springboks have, respectfully, faced them all.

Whose name is written in the stars?

Boning up on the back story of what has made the Springboks versus the All Blacks a singular rivalry in team sport, it struck me that we are seeing a revival of a drama that, officially, started in 1921.

The backdrop may be modified, the script altered and there are different actors but the playbook seems certain to have the same outcomes contained in every previous encounter of rugby’s greatest rivalry.

There will be heroes, standout players who capture the imagination and adulation, there will be controversy, probably involving referees, there will be (please no) critical injuries and there will be countless if-onlys. As Mark Twain said “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Thus it’s been since the first series in 1921 between two nations in which rugby is said to be a religion – and for some it is!

As previously related, the bonds of rugby’s unique and paradoxical culture - enmity coupled to brotherhood - were forged in long gone wars, from the turn of the 20^th century when New Zealand volunteers fought in the Boer Wars, to the First World War when Saffer and Kiwi servicemen arranged matches against each other to 1919, when the NZ Imperial Services team broke their steamship journey back to their two islands in the South Pacific to tour South Africa, young men from both nations were of a mind to try to beat each other on the rugby field.

The first official tour was by the Springboks to NZ in 1921 and the dye was cast for the touch-and-go outcomes that would prevail into the next century. The 1921 Springboks lost the first Test, won the second and drew the last. Rubber tied.

Next it was the turn of NZ to visit South Africa, in 1928. The Springboks went win/lose, win/lose so again the series was tied.

It took another nine years for the return visit to NZ in 1937 to materialize; perhaps not unsurprising in that all arrangements had to be made my post or telegram.

The 1937 Springbok side, captained by Phillip Nel, a farmer from Natal who had pretty much retired before he was asked to lead the touring team, went on to wrest an edge by winning the series 2-1 – losing the first, winning the second and closing it out with a masterful performance in the decider at Eden Park.

The Second World War, which broke out two years later (almost to the day), put an end to rugby hostilities and, but for the Nazi sympathizers in South Africa, South Africans and New Zealanders found themselves on the same side in the British Commonwealth Forces, and the desire to match themselves at rugby was again evident.

During the war in the desert many Springboks and All Blacks who had clashed on the rugby field not too long before met in matches between military divisions from the countries involved in the war and, as author and historian Paul Dobson put it, “when South Africans and New Zealanders met in pubs a scrum would develop. They scrummed bars to bits from Benghazi, to Bologna and on to Brighton.”

Rugby matches were even arranged between South Africans and Kiwis incarcerated in prisoner of war camps – the South Africans contriving to stitch together “jerseys” made from cotton flour bags and concocting a mixture of ingredients to dye them green.

And there’s that refrain of history. Just over 30 years later a crazed pilot and his assistant would drop paper bags filled with flour onto the field at Eden Park in Auckland in attempt to halt, or disrupt, a Test match between the All Blacks and the Springboks.

Soon after the great war, in 1949, the rivalry was reignited when Fred Allen led the All Blacks to South Africa – a tour which became a scar on the NZ rugby psyche and which emphasized a difference in approach that exists to this day.

Those All Blacks struggled in the scrum, to the extent that Dr Craven stepped in to provide some assistance, and it negatively affected their ingrained ethos to run and pass. The difference, as it is today, is that while New Zealanders see the scrum as a means to restart the game, in South Africa the scrum is not a means to an end but the end itself. That difference will again be in play in the series soon to begin.

The All Blacks of ’49 lost the series 0-4 and it opened a wound that was long in healing.

Vengeance was in the air when it was the Springboks’ turn to return to New Zealand in 1956 and things went wrong for the Boks even before it began. There was disharmony in the camp, resulting in the wrong captain being selected, and the touring side never got into gear against the zealous All Blacks; whose questionable tour de force was to select their country’s heavyweight boxing champion, Kevin Skinner, to “soften up” the Bok forwards.

The upshot was that although the Tests were tightly contested the All Blacks won the third and fourth to take the series after the first two had ended one apiece. It was the first time South Africa had lost a series since winning their first in 1903.

Although sad that the two nation’s obsession with rugby tended to obscure the unpardonable racial prejudice on South Africa’s part, that blighted the contest and hurt many a fine player, the tours went on.

Wilson Whineray led the Kiwis to SA in 1960, Dawie de Villiers took the Boks back in 1965 and Brian Lochore brought a formidable team to South Africa in 1970. However, South Africa’s pariah status meant that the reciprocal cycle was broken and instead of the Springboks flying to NZ in 1976, Andy Leslie brought the All Blacks to SA.

Against the judgment of many it was decided that the Springboks, under Wynand Claassen, would, and did, travel to New Zealand 1981. It was an expedition that shook NZ society and delivered unimaginable scenes at sports stadiums… but rugby people said the All Blacks won the series. (South Africans railed against the Welsh referee Clive Norling and New Zealanders hailed Allan Hewson’s winning penalty).

The NZ Cavaliers, containing as many All Blacks as were willing to take the money (which was on offer even though vehemently denied), toured South Africa in 1986 and, thanks to South Africa’s political transformation in the early 90s, there was a remarkably short hiatus before the Springboks again played the All Blacks, as Doc Craven dearly wanted, in their first post-isolation Test 34 years ago in August 1992.

Next the Boks toured New Zealand in 1994, then came the World Cup Final in 1995 and an amazing five Tests in 1996, the last time the All Blacks made a proper tour to SA, which enabled the New Zealanders to finally put some salve on that 1949 scar by winning a series in South Africa.

After that came the professional-era Rugby Championship and another Rugby World Cup Final; and, to adapt a phrase, the rest continued to be history.

Of course, there were also epic games against the British (and Irish, a qualification that did not become mandatory until years later) Lions, the French and the Wallabies, but Test matches between the great southern hemisphere foes became like ancient amphitheaters and players like gladiators euphemistically fighting for their lives.

At first reams were written, before television’s moving pictures brought an extra sparkle to great deeds. When the Springboks and the All Blacks met, heroes (and some villains) were made.

Their names are many. On South Africa’s side (I’ll stick to more recent memory) Joggie Jansen, Ian McCallum, Gert Muller, Naas Botha, Danie Gerber, Ray Mordt, Francois Pienaar, Joost van der Westhuizen, Joel Stransky, Andre Joubert, and so many more were etched into the annals because of moments of glory against the All Blacks.

Equally the Springboks did the same for the like of Colin Meads, Ian Kirkpatrick, Bryan “BeeGee” Williams, Syd Going, Sean Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke, Va’aiga “Inga the Winger” Tuigamala, Christian Cullen, Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and so many others.

And, of course, Jonah Lomu, the most spoken about, the most feared and, in today’s terms, arguably the most influential rugby player of all-time because it was his exploits that caused media mogul Rupert Murdoch, determined to head off a raid on rugby union by a group wanting to create a world professional circuit, to phone his 2IC Sam Chisholm and say “get me that man.”

With that rugby, after the 1995 World Cup, became fully professional the following year and Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship came into being in the southern hemisphere. South Africans love to point out that Lomu never scored a try against the Springboks.

The stage has again been set; the first show of the revival is on August 22 when once again the Springboks will lock horns with the All Blacks (at Ellis Park with three more Tests to follow including that one in Baltimore, USA) and it is fascinating to think which players might join the pantheon of all-time greats.

Tried-tested and reliable Springboks such as Cheslin Kolbe, Pieter-Stef du Toit, Eben Etzebeth, Malcolm Marx, Damian Willemse or Handre Pollard or one of the relative “newbies” such as Sacha, Zachary Porthen, Cameron Hanekom, Grant Williams or Paul de Villiers?

And from the All Blacks? Try-scoring machine Will Jordan, skipper Ardie Savea, Damian MacKenzie, Cam Roigard, Ruben Love?

Destiny awaits. Whose name is written in the stars?

Different times espouse different mores. Imagine if today a key figure in the Springbok structures were to tell the team about to play the All Blacks, “when South Africa plays New Zealand, consider your country at war.”

This was indeed a statement made by the legendary Springbok forward Boy Louw ahead of the 1949 series in South Africa. “Oom” Boy, as he was known in latter years, a Springbok in 18 Tests from 1928 to 1938 (thus a member of the famous 1937 touring team to New Zealand) was a highly respected character deeply embedded in the lore of Springbok rugby.

Famous for his amusing and quaint mangling of English (“looks at the scoreboard,” “I don’t play with childs”) was an expert in the laws of the game, referring to the Law Book as “the Bible”, and as, in 1949, he had recently seen service in World War II as a bombardier in the 6^th Armoured Division of the SA Defence force fighting in North Africa and Italy he probably felt the need to remind the Springboks of Felix du Plessis (Morné’s father) of how hard would be the challenge they faced against their most respected opponents.

As it turned out the Springboks won the series 4-0 (a statistic that still rankles in Kiwi-land) so it might be said Oom Boy’s words worked.

However, he was not wrong to equate rugby’s greatest rivalry to war, for it was indeed in international conflicts that the rugby bond between two small countries in the southern hemisphere was born.

During the Boer Wars contingents of New Zealand servicemen were despatched to fight for King and country on the veldt and some gave their lives. The Langverwacht Hill Memorial near Vrede in the Free State honours 23 members of the NZ 7^th Contingent who were killed in a fierce battle that took place there, and many plaques in NZ bear memory to these soldiers, some who lost their lives in other skirmishes. An interesting codicil to the memorial in Vrede is that is on a farm adjacent to the family farm of the late Springbok Ruben Kruger, and 1995 Rugby World Cup winner, where he is buried.

After the conclusion of the Second Boer War in 1902 many New Zealand servicemen stayed and settled in South Africa and, unsurprisingly, played rugby. A group of expatriates formed the New Zealanders Rugby Club in Durban and in three consecutive years, 1904 to 1906, won the historic Moor Cup as champions of the Natal Rugby Union league competition.

Groups of British rugby tourists had already made visits to the colonies (to SA in 1891, 1896 & 1903) and the outliers were keen to take on the might of the (rugby) empire.

The first New Zealand touring team went to the UK in 1905 and the first South African side in 1906 and their legacy is still evident more than a century later with the arrival of 2026 New Zealand tourists in South Africa.

Both teams acquired the names by which they are known on those visits to Blighty. Although often dismissed as a fable the story goes that a sub-editor on an English newspaper misunderstood a reporter’s dictated words and thereby dubbed New Zealand’s players “the All Blacks.”

The Kiwis played an all-out running game and the writer is said to have stated that they played like “all backs.” The sub-editor, knowing that the tourists played in a black outfit, changed this to All Blacks. A more plausible explanation might be that a journalist asked one of the Kiwis how he should refer to them and got the reply, “we have black jerseys, black shorts and black stockings, we are the All Blacks!”

The story of how South Africa’s side became synonymous with a beautiful gazelle roaming the plains of southern Africa is often mistold, but there is no doubt the moniker was bestowed by Paul Roos; captain of the 1906 touring team after whom the famous Stellenbosch school is named.

In some telling Roos, when his team disembarked in Southampton, when asked by a reporter how to refer to his team, “pointed to the badge on his blazer and said ‘you can call us de Springbokken.’”

Springbok it was, and became, but Roos could not have been wearing a blazer with a Springbok emblem because the team’s kit had been tailored in England and the players had not yet received their garments. In fact, the decision that the Springbok would be South Africa’s symbol was made in 1903.

Still, the first threads of the tapestry that would lead to rugby’s greatest rivalry remain in place. The New Zealanders caught the eye for their running game and the South Africans for the sheer robustness of their forwards.

Now, 120 years on, speculation is again whether the rapid, running and passing game of the All Blacks (so spectacularly evident in their Nations Cup clash against France in Christchurch early in July) will trump the bludgeoning, box-kicking approach favoured by the Springboks.

The tour by Ardie Savea’s 2026 All Blacks (even though the captain, strangely, is not yet with his team) is a return to old-style touring with midweek matches against provinces – only harder because these days the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls and Lions are full-on professional squads – and its going to be riveting.

And whatever some local fans think (especially those who chant Olé! Olé! Olé! Over the Haka) the All Blacks will not be pushovers; anything but.

Historic statistics and results reveal just how closely the two teams have been matched over so many years.

When South Africa re-emerged from Apartheid isolation the first test was against the All Blacks at Ellis Park in 1992, the Springboks were ahead on the overall leader board: Played 37, Won 20, Lost 15, Drawn 2.

In the ensuing years the Men in Black have often been dominant; forging well ahead and the historic count for the Springboks now reads: Played 110, Won 43, Lost 63, Drawn 4. The average score is: SA 17 NZ 21. Note: The numbers are often skewed because some statisticians, especially in South Africa, include the “rebel” tour by the NZ Cavaliers in 1986. Interestingly South Africa awarded the players who played in the series Springbok caps, but as time has passed the series has been accepted as “unofficial.”

The Springboks are the holders and, of course, the only team to win the Rugby World Cup four times. The All Blacks have won the Webb Ellis Cup three times (Australia and England being the only other nations to capture it) and they and the Springboks are the only ones to have retained it.

In two of the Finals the Springboks beat the All Blacks – 15-12 after extra time in 1995 and 12-11 in France in 2023. The Springboks failed to score a try in either of those Finals. The Springboks also won the 3^rd place play-off against the All Blacks in Cardiff in 1999.

The All Blacks beat SA in a quarter-final in Melbourne in 2003 and a semi-final in London in 2015. In addition, the All Blacks beat the Springboks in their opening game of the 2023 tournament in Japan; thus making the Boks the only side to have lost in a Pool match and go on to claim the trophy.

Three of the Springboks’ five biggest defeats were at the hands of the All Blacks (0-57 in 2017; 15-57 in 2016 and 16-52 in 2003) but conversely the biggest defeats in the All Blacks’ history were against South Africa (43-10 in Wellington last year and 35-7 in London in 2023).

The Boks are currently on a run of five victories out of six, but the All Blacks have in the recent past maintained markedly dominant periods – including a run of 19 victories in 22 Tests from 2010 to 2021.

So, it might not be war but in sporting terms it will be as close as you get.

· Boy Louw, holder of the pre-war record of 18 Test caps, played in every position in the scrum for SA. In Test matches he turned out at tighthead, loosehead, lock, flank and No8 and also played hooker in four provincial matches on the 1937 tour to Australia and NZ. He gives the lie to the oft-expressed view of SA’s opponents of the colossal size of Springbok forwards for in the official annals he is listed as having stood 1.80m and weighed 90.7kg. The 1937 side, captained by Phillip Nel and including Danie Craven, won the series 2-1, scoring five (3-point) tries to nil to win the last 17-6, and were wryly described as “the best rugby team ever to leave the shores of New Zealand.”

· I would like to acknowledge and thank the many rugby writers, historians and statisticians whose dedicated recording of tours and tests have so often helped me to draw on sources other than my own memory.

Ever since it was announced there has been a current of anticipation in the air - excitement, determination, nervousness, annoyance, curiosity, awe, retribution and hubris, depending on the place and the people present where the phrase was uttered.

The All Blacks are coming... for some there is enthusiastic anticipation, for the players a determination to win, for others the worry that the men in black might undo the hegemony of the Springboks, then there’s the feeling of what’s-this-all-about, not to mention those who see in the tourists a chance to get payback for historic political wrongs and the boastful arrogance of so many local fans who believe their team in green is unbeatable.

The All Blacks are coming… there’s a tinge of the barbarians are at the gate in the way commentators and fans alike refer to the impending eight matches – four against South Africa’s URC sides and four Tests - in which the tourists from New Zealand will strut their stuff.

Such is the expectancy that a welcoming event was arranged - at the Cape Town Stadium rather than as, many years ago, an official reception hosted by the city’s mayor.

Having to give a few talks concentrating on the All Blacks caused me to haul out the many historic books I have to bone up on the deeds and facts of yesteryear to correctly capture what the two unions aptly described as “Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.”

That’s when I came across a picture that transported me to when the All Blacks first entered my consciousness – 66 years ago in a little town in the Karoo.

I was nine years old. The village was Richmond, nestled alongside the national road (we didn’t then refer to the N1) from Cape Town to Johannesburg. My parents owned the Masonic Hotel and my job on a Sunday afternoon was to walk up the street, passed the little park, to the local “koffiehuis”, Rushof, to collect the Sunday newspapers which had been transported from Cape Town.

The bundles arrived in big maroon railway busses, forerunners of today’s twin-cabs with passenger seating up front and cargo beds at the back. The Cape papers came by rail to Merriman, our nearest station, from where they were delivered to our little “dorp.”

Keeping in touch with matches involved listening to rugby commentary on the big “wireless” (from the Afrikaans “draadloos”) on the counter of my Dad’s bar. People came from all over to sit, with “dop” in hand”, to shout and cheer as the commentators described the action.

These were Wilson Whineray’s 1960 All Blacks. Fullback Don Clarke immediately caught the attention of rugby fans with the booming goals he kicked off the solid toe of his right rugby boot.

The first Test between the great rivals in 1960, the Springboks still smarting at having lost the series in New Zealand in 1956, was played at Ellis Park and the Afrikaans commentator calling the game roared with delight as he described Springbok wing Hennie van Zyl twice rounding Don Clarke to score tries.

It ended 13-0 to the Springboks and the next day I was already at the café when the bus arrived. The Cape Times, and perhaps The Argus too, printed their big rugby pictures in sepia and there it was, Hennie van Zyl sprinting away from a despairing Don Clarke. That one was cut out and pasted on my bedroom wall along with the full colour photos of the Springboks that used to come in the weekly magazine “Die Huisgenoot,” and it brought back a flood of memories when it turned up in one of the books I was paging through.

Hennie van Zyl instantly became my hero. He was an angular left-wing from Transvaal with sharp features, which I didn’t notice until years later, and I had my hair cut as his was – shaved on the sides with a little patch on the top; which today is seen as quite hip but in those days was known as a “poenskop.”

The All Blacks won the second Test 11-3 at Newlands, continued to crisscross the country and match afternoons, for games against the like of Rhodesia, Free State, the Junior Springboks and Western Province, were spent listening to the crackling radio.

Then one day my Dad had a big surprise for me. “I have tickets and I’m taking you to see the third Test in Bloemfontein.” So that was the first time I saw the Springboks; sitting on the rough scaffolding of temporary stands on the far side of the field.

The Test was Lionel Wilson’s debut and I have a clear picture of the All Blacks winning the ball at a lineout and passing it straight back to Don Clarke who sent a booming up-and-under to plummet from the skies onto the slight Springbok fullback. In those days it was okay to violently run into the catcher but Wilson went into a deep squat as he caught the ball, straightened up and kicked it back and into touch.

The All Blacks tried it again and Wilson handled the moment with the same panache. It seemed the Kiwis then decided the fullback from Western Province was not going to crack and eschewed the tactic.

I recall I had been given a plastic bag of candy floss but such was the tension of a tight match that I did not touch the sticky sweet stuff, quietly dropping the bag into the gap under the planks we were seated on.

The Springboks led 11-6 with minutes to go but then a dropped ball allowed the balding All Black wing Rod McMullen to fly-hack the ball up to Boks’ goal line, snap it up and dive over for a try in the far corner. 11-9 (3-point try in those days) with the conversion to come.

A deep silence settled on the raucous stands as Clarke placed the ball, upright in a slight indentation he made with his heel, and then slowly and deliberately stepped forward and sent it sailing between the uprights. 11-11! A draw!

That meant the series was deadlocked with the final Test to come in Port Elizabeth two weeks later.

Once again my Dad had a surprise in store. This time he announced that he had managed to get two tickets to the Boet Erasmus Stadium and that Richmond’s Town Clerk (my Dad was the mayor) would be taking me to the game.

Again, the memories I have are crystal clear; especially the much talked about incident in which the Springbok flank and hard man Martin Pelser, who played at that level in spite of having only one eye, punched the badgering All Black scrumhalf Kevin Briscoe; leaving in a heap behind his own pack.

It happened right in front of us and I saw it clearly. The result again was on a knife-edge. Clarke’s boot was offkey and the winning try went to Pelser with Dick Lockyear kicking a penalty and a conversion. Match won 8-3. Series to the Springboks.

Although I’m a skeptic I have often wondered, looking back on my career, whether my having a calling in sports journalism and being bound to rugby was predestined by some higher cosmic power… and along the way the All Blacks would become landmarks in the journey.

By the time of the next tour, South Africa to New Zealand in 1965, the lore of the Springboks’ invincibility had been shattered as had the working life of my father, dragging our family into quite a dark place. I was in school in Kuruman and, my love of newspapers undiminished, I followed the travails of Dawie de Villiers’ team in a state of disappointment.

The Springboks, who lost both Tests against the Wallabies in Australia on their way to the Land of the Long White Cloud, restored some pride after losing the first two Tests in NZ by winning the third test against the All Blacks 19-16 (including a try by John Gainsford, a hero of mine from the Richmond days) thanks to a famous penalty by lock Tiny Naude out of the cloying mud of Lancaster Park in Christchurch, but they were thoroughly outplayed in the last at Eden Park going down 3-20 and conceding five tries to nil.

By 1970, when the next All Blacks under Brian Lochore arrived, I had just completed the Argus company’s journalist training school, known as Cadet School, and was starting life as a cub reporter at for my first employer, the Diamond Fields Advertiser in Kimberley.

A quirk of fate had caused me to pick journalism as a career and soon after setting foot in the offices of the DFA the stars would uncannily align to push me into sport. The Sports Editor of the DFA, who ran a one-man show, resigned and me being the only “jock” on the paper, never mind a very young one, the editor asked me to pick up the sports beat.

And what a fillip that was; the best training ground ever. As the sports man on the paper I did everything; wrote about all sports, covered big events, took my own pictures (including developing the film and printing the photographs), laid out the pages, subbed the copy and saw the sports spreads “off the stone” in the “works” – the DFA then still using a hot metal typesetting process.

Having had liberally minded parents and entering the world of progressive English newspapers I was aware of and sensitive to the historic issues of race which to this day are a blight on the rugby relationship between South Africa and New Zealand – in short that South African administrators, even before the National Party came to power, insisted that opponents had to field “white” teams and the fact that it acquiesced would in time become an embarrassment for the NZRFU.

For the 1970 tour it was agreed by John Vorster’s Nats that two players “of colour” could be part of the touring team, Sid Going and Bryan “BeeGee” Williams who was in fact Samoan. I felt that such crass and hypocritical manipulation, at the very least, was an insult to such fine players.

The next All Black tour to South Africa, in 1976, coincided with a significant turning point in our country’s history for it marked what became known as the Soweto Uprising – a revolution that in not too many years would lead to the dismantling of Apartheid.

By then I had managed to get a position in the sports department of The Argus in Cape Town, although not focusing on rugby. However, A.C. Parker, the legendary sports editor and rugby writer of the paper, did assign me to cover the All Blacks’ game against the SA Federation XV at the Goodwood Show Grounds on a Wednesday afternoon as well as the odd event where some of the All Blacks made appearances.

On one such occasion Ian Kirkpatrick and Bryan Williams were at a department store in the city and had to be hurriedly “evacuated” in the back of a police van when a big protest outside St George’s Cathedral caused police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd.

My next serendipitous break involved moving to Johannesburg and soon New Zealand and the All Blacks would once again provide a seminal moment in the road I was travelling.

I had been offered, and jumped at, the opportunity to become the rugby writer on the Rand Daily Mail and soon also the group rugby correspondent (the pompous title the Brits like to attach to rugby reporter!) of the SA Associated Newspapers (SAAN) company.

First came the tour of Chick Henderson’s mixed SA Barbarians team (nine blacks, nine coloured and nine whites) to the UK in 1979, then Bill Beaumont’s British & Irish Lions in 1980 and then the 1981 visit to New Zealand; surely one of the most bizarre and momentous sports undertakings ever that would come to be known as “The Flour Bomb Tour.”

Culminating in an implausible final test in which flour bombs (big brown paper packets filled with flour) were dropped by fervent anti-tour protestors, the pilot and his assistant, from a small aircraft onto the field at Eden Park the tour by Wynand Claassen’s Springboks had resulted in a state of emergency for the peaceful country also known as Aotearoa and it was evident that the Boks would not soon be welcome in NZ again nor would the All Blacks tour South Africa.

However desperate plans were put into operation and just five years after the ’81 upheaval a New Zealand team did tour South Africa in 1986 – the New Zealand Cavaliers, managed by legendary figures such as Colin Meads and Ian Kirkpatrick, captained by the 1981 skipper Andy Dalton and including many players who would help NZ to win the first Rugby World Cup in 1987.

The unmapped road of life had taken me into the world of corporate P.R. but just as we broke into the final decade of the 20^th century the All Blacks once again featured at a turning point.

I was persuaded (according to my CV but in truth I couldn’t wait!) to return to newspapers by the then Sports Editor Edward Griffiths as Rugby and Golf Correspondent of the Sunday Times and thus covered the exciting period that marked South Africa’s re-emergence from isolation… and just in time to take up a seat in the Press Box to report on the visit by Sean Fitzpatrick’s 1992 All Blacks who, at the insistence of Dr Danie Craven, were the Springboks’ first opponents when the curtain of sports seclusion was drawn aside.

The Wallabies came too. The Springboks toured France and England. South African rugby could not wait to take on the four best sides in the world.

For me the signposts continued to be All Black. The Springboks made a full tour to NZ in 1994, then came Madiba’s World Cup in 1995 and the Men in Black were back here in 1996 – the last full tour which now, 30 years later, is being reprieved with the arrival in Cape Town of a new generation of All Blacks.

Sadly, the price of tickets has excluded grassroots fans from being in the stadiums for the Test matches, but the anticipation and excitement is undimmed. My old friend Paul Dobson had it spot-on when he called it Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.

· This piece has meandered for too long, seeing as I come from a school in which verbosity was frowned upon, so I’ve hardly touched on so much of the history, the characters and the epic tests. Might have to return to it.

A casual acquaintance who loves to chat about “THE RUGBY” gushed “wasn’t that the best test ever by the Springboks!?” – referring to the Boks’ record 43-10 victory over the All Blacks in Wellington.

Well, no, it wasn’t, I replied, which elicited the usual puzzled expression and “what do you mean?” lift of the eyebrows.

Simply that. It was a good performance and a shock score but it wasn’t the best-ever test by the Springboks. As I remarked a couple of times as the blow-outs against the Wallabies at Ellis Park and against the All Blacks at Eden Park quickly faded from memory to be replaced by euphoria at the wonders of “tony-ball” and more veneration of Rassie, “I have been present at much better performances, much better tests, by the Springboks.”

I suppose folks can’t be blamed given the scourge of sensationalism that has overtaken TV commentary and (mostly) online reporting.

The hyperbole of the reporting on the Wellington victory surely played a role in how the proletariat perceived the test. I saw it described as “arguably the greatest ever by any Springboks (sic) team,” and “the greatest Springbok performance in living memory.”

As a crusty old sub-editor growled at me when I was finding my fingers on the keyboard, “you have to be very old, my boy, to invoke living memory.” Either that or you must have read a lot, know a lot and remembered to always acknowledge what went before.

Wellington was an excellent performance by the Boks but, record score or not, the worst-ever defeat suffered by the mighty All Blacks or not, it was not the best ever.

There were too many errors in the first quarter, too many botched opportunities, too many potential flaws not exploited by the All Blacks for the test to be rated as a perfect all-round performance, but the purveyors of purple prose were blinded by the score.

Without having to resort to trawling the records books I could easily bring to mind overall performances that were better.

For instance. The last test at Eden Park in 1937 (I wasn’t there!), won 17-6 (five three-point tries to nil) which caused Phil Nel’s touring side to be described as “the best rugby team ever to leave the shores of New Zealand.” If you don’t believe me do try to see Michael Charton’s riveting illustrated talk that brings the tour and the team to life.

Other tests that could be in the all-time gallery were the 44-0 defeat of Scotland at Murrayfield during the 1950/51 (as the chirps went at the time - the Scots were lucky to get nought!) and in more recent times the 61-22 demolition of the Wallabies at Loftus in 1997; 52-10 over France at the Parc des Princes in Paris in 1997, when the French crowd started cheering the Boks; the 24-23 comeback victory, after having been 5-23 down, over New Zealand in Durban in 1998; the brilliant 36-0 obliteration of England during the 2007 Rugby World Cup at the Stade Francaise; 35-7 over the All Blacks at Twickenham in 2023.

There are many more that come to mind when solid ingrained basics, natural speed and strength, all-round interplay, superior tactics and brilliant individuals just clicked and produced 80 minutes of relentlessly faultless rugby.

Having been irritated by the immoderate praise for the Springboks it was a relief to see that within the camp the error-strewn first quarter in Wellington was not forgotten in the appraisals that would have taken place.

Rassie said there’s no need to celebrate too much; Tony Brown cautioned that while it was a good performance the Boks still had a lot to do and pinpointed some of the poor execution and Cheslin Kolbe said “we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”

Perhaps a better postscript to the Wellington test might have been “that was one of the worst performances I have ever seen from an All Black side.” I know, I know, I know… you’re only as good as you’re allowed to be, but…

With Argentina up next a Bok mindset to “stay grounded” is spot-on because the Pumas, on the evidence of how well they’ve done by beating both the All Blacks and Australia coupled to the way they’ve played, are arguably the best running side in the competition.

And with the Springboks still set on moving the ball more it could make for a spectacular classic at King’s Park. Of interest to me will be whether the Pumas can outflank the narrow defensive configuration plus in-tackling, leaving space on the outside, the Springboks have adopted which both the Wallabies and the All Blacks seem to have spotted but were unable to exploit.

And, as so often happens, the strange workings of co-incidence came into play as I started to sift through boxes of mementos that have been stored for years, hardly looked at again, and now occupying space that is needed – among them many programmes and posters.

One of the first dusty items extracted turned out to be this one (don’t you love the spelling?) commemorating the Springboks’ first overseas tour after the end of isolation when they went via Argentina to the UK and France.

It may take 55 years but lightning can strike twice

Over to the right, near the 10m-line, and he coolly stepped back, came forward, swung his foot and sent the ball sailing between the uprights to win the Currie Cup for Griqualand West.

George Whitehead, for long a stalwart of Eastern Province, guaranteed a spot for his name in the history of Kimberley and Griqualand West rugby by slotting the penalty to make the score 27-25 over the Lions in the Final played at Ellis Park, but it is not Whitehead who was in my mind when writing the intro to this article.

Instead, the black-and-white image was of Peet Smith kicking the long-range penalty at De Beers Stadium in Kimberley that gave Griquas their last, and most famous, Currie Cup victory in 1970 – 55 years ago.

I was on the touchline, clumsily wielding a camera, when the wearers of the unique peacock-blue-and-white hooped jersey defied all predictions by beating Northern Transvaal 11-9 on that September day that remains a highlight of a sports writing career that provided so many.

Against all odds Griqualand West made it to that year’s Final against mighty Northern Transvaal; Griquas’ log-topping position meaning the match was to be played in Kimberley at the rickety old De Beers Stadium.

The city was abuzz with expectation and having recently returned from the Argus Cadet School in Johannesburg to start my career as a reporter on The Diamond Fields Advertiser (DFA) I was caught up in the excitement and build-up; being sent to get pictures and write small reports on Griquas’ practices – of which there were only two and which were no more than light runs while passing the ball.

On the Friday I went to the airport to report on and photograph the arrival of the Northern Transvaal team (in those days Blue Bulls was not yet common currency); snapping one of Frik du Preez weighing himself on the big baggage scale.

As it turned out it was as a photographer that I would attend the next day’s Final. Tony Ball, then sports editor of the DFA, did not have a Press box ticket for me, but he did have a photographer’s pass. On the DFA we took, developed the film and printed our own pictures to illustrate our stories, so with my Pentax and the office’s battered 200mm zoom lens (up to a difficult to focus 400mm) the touchline became my office for the day.

Griquas were not given a chance of upsetting a Springbok-laden Northern Transvaal but what transpired, in close-up, was action so vivid, so explosive, so thrilling, so moving that it remains burned into my memory in clear focus – unlike some of my photographs! (I kept the negatives and the images here are of the events recorded on those black-and-white strips of film).

The action that close is bone-jarring; sometimes my own as I tripped over the legs of spectators lining the touchline.

A loud crack signalled a key moment in the game. Griqua lock Jannie van Aswegen had punched his opponent Johan Spies and he went down poleaxed. * (See amusing end piece). The Northerns players swarmed angrily around Van Aswegen, but the Griquas did as coach Ian Kirkpatrick had promised and did not stand back in a flurry of swinging fists.

Order was restored by referee Ben Calitz (in those days not even a thought given to sending Van Aswegen off), but after that the Griqua lock had a target on his back. He needed attention many times, but saw out the match, and in the post-mortems the theory was put forward that Griquas had won because of the punch because Northerns had started playing the man rather than the ball.

A surprising aspect of going through the photographs is how sparse the crowd really was. Apart from the ancient De Beers stand the only other seating was on temporary scaffolding structures or on the field itself.

Caught up in the action, though, I felt as though there were myriads present and the noise deafening – especially when the Griquas rocked the Pretorians with two superb tries by right-wing Buddy Swartz.

Swartz, a UCT student whom the Griqua selectors had overlooked until a practice outing against Free State immediately before the Final, scored spectacularly; one after a break by centre Koos Waldeck and the other after a Mannetjies Roux crash-tackled fullback Tonie Roux to dislodge the ball.

For his second Swartz got home by diving straight over the top of a crouching Tonie Roux, touching down almost on the same spot in the right-hand corner.

Northerns turned the vice however and a try by Frik du Preez and two penalties by fullback Chris Luther put them 9-8 ahead – trumping Swartz’s two three-point tries and a single conversion by Piet Visagie.

Visagie, so often the match-winner for Griquas, had a heavily bandaged leg and kicked poorly which meant flank Peet Smith was handed the ball for the historic long-range penalty that made it 11-9 to Griquas; unleashing unbridled joy at the ground and spiralling into the biggest celebrations Kimberley had ever seen.

At the end I sat down on the field, near Buddy’s Corner, and waited for the crowd to disperse. Mannetjies Roux had been carried off the field laughing and crying at the same time, and an old man with a long beard knelt down in the in-goal area and patted the grass where Swartz had scored: “God die rooinek (Englishman),” he said, “God die rooinek… nie net een nie, twee… net hier.” Tears streamed out of his eyes and left streaks on his beard; when I left he was still there patting the ground.

What a day it was for Kimberley, what a week, what a year, what a time. The Currie Cup won by Mannetjies Roux and his bunch of heroes was displayed in one of the windows of the SA Perm building in Kimberley’s main street and for weeks afterwards there would be a knot of people on the pavement just admiring it; like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

The performance by the Griquas team of 2025 must stand as a reminder to SA Rugby that more should be done to keep the Currie Cup vibrant, to keep the “outliers” of provincial rugby in the loop because, as Dr Danie Craven, used to remark “Springbokke kom van die platteland af.” (not a perfect translation but, “Springboks come from the country districts.”)

Here are the line-ups of the teams who played in the Final on 26 September 1970.

Griqualand West: Tos Smith, Buddy Swartz, Mannetjies, Roux, Koos Waldeck, Kat Myburgh, Piet Visagie, Joggie Viljoen, Soon Nel, James Combrinck, Braam Fourie, Piet van Deventer, Jannie van Aswegen, Gert Scheepers, Peet Smith, Denys Vorster.

Northern Transvaal: Tonie Roux, Frannie Alberts, Andre van Staden, Piet Brand, Chris Luther, Johan van Blommenstein, Piet Uys (capt), Mof Myburgh, Gys Pitzer, Ronnie Potgieter, Polla Fourie, Johan Spies, Frik du Preez, Louis Muller, Fourie du Preez.

Referee: Ben Calitz

*A few weeks after the Final Mr Kirk (that’s how I addressed Ian Kirkpatrick) had a dinner for the team and insisted each one stand and tell the gathering of his memories of the game. Lock Gert Scheepers, who hailed from Jan Kempdorp, got up and with a pained expression said: “Oom Kirk het vir Jannie gesê hy moet vir Johan Spies moer, maar toe moer Frik (Du Preez) vir my terug!.” (Uncle Kirk told Jannie to punch Johan Spies, but then Frik (Du Preez) punched me back!”)

FOOTNOTE:

The Currie Cup has an historic Griqualand West connection. When the first British team under W.E. “Bill” Maclagan toured South Africa in 1891 included in their baggage was a splendid gold-plated cup given to Maclagan by Sir Donald Currie, owner of Union-Castle Lines, the shipping company whose liner the Dunottar Castle that transported the team to South Africa, with instructions that it be presented to the team that put up the best performance against the tourists. By common consent this team was Griqualand West and their representative took possession of the “Sir Donald Currie Cup” at a farewell lunch held aboard the Garth Castle at the end of the tour. Griqualand West then carried out the instruction of Sir Donald by handing over the gold trophy to the SA Rugby Board to be the prize in an annual interprovincial competition.

Disclaimer: The photograph of Piet Uys and Mannetjies Roux with the Currie Cup was actually taken by Tony Ball. I was prevented from attending the reception in the rather small room in the hotel opposite the Cecil John Rhodes statue and rather than arguing with the doorman Tony Ball had the presence of mind to say “give me your camera.”

The first time the large white splatters suddenly appeared on the field they looked like the droppings of giant seagulls.

I cannot think of Eden Park without that image, preceding arguably one of the most bizarre sports events ever, materialising in the mist of memory… even though it was 44 years ago.

The Auckland stadium which New Zealanders are apt to call an All Black fortress – and why not seeing as they have not lost in 50 Tests played there since 1994 – was the setting in 1981 for what will always be known as The Flour Bomb Test.

And that singular defeat, by France in ’94, came about because of one of the all-time greatest tries capped off by one of the best quotes ever.

An article I wrote for a book produced to commemorate the 40-year reunion of Wynand Claassen’s 1981 Springboks was entitled “The Flour Bomb Tour - when fiction became reality.”

This was the introduction.

“’Far have I travelled and much have I seen, dark distant mountains with valleys of green…’ The words come rolling back like mist from the sea as I sit down to write about a remarkable time that a few of us shared.

“’Smiles in the sunshine and tears in the rain, still take me back to where my memories remain…’” Enthusiasts of popular music will have recognised the words of a hit song in italics – Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre.” It always comes back to me when I think of 1981 and New Zealand for wherever one went into an establishment that had a jukebox, even in the remotest of spots in the South Island, the skirl of the bagpipes in the Wings chart-topper could be heard.

It was quite a year, 1981.

The Aids virus was identified; the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia took place; the word Internet was mentioned for the first time and MS-DOS was released by Microsoft along with the first IBM PC.

Ronald Reagan became president of the United States in January and in July the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer took place.

The big hit songs were “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes, “Endless Love” by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie and “Lady” by Kenny Rogers.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark, directed by Steven Spielberg, with Harrison Ford in the lead role, was the hit movie of the year. Muhammad Ali finally retired with career record of 55 wins and 5 defeats.

And in early July a group of South Africans, mostly young men in the prime of their lives, the Springboks, boarded the first of many airliners that would transport them around the globe on an epic journey the like of which will probably never be repeated. A rugby tour like no other. Their destination was two islands in the South Pacific known as New Zealand, home of the legendary and mighty All Blacks.

It was meant to be a rekindling of what is often described as rugby’s greatest rivalry, but in the end, there was so much more than just rugby.

It was expected there would be demonstrations against South Africa’s discriminatory and race-based policies as a good many New Zealanders were opposed to the tour.

However, these protests became increasingly angry and violent, pitting Kiwi against Kiwi, policeman against citizen, father against son, brother against brother as attempts were made to force matches to be cancelled with the ultimate aim of having the tour annulled and the Springboks sent home.

The second match of the tour, against Waikato, was called off when protestors broke through Hamilton Rugby Park’s perimeter fencing and formed a tight, milling knot in the centre of the field; fiercely resisting efforts by police to get them to move.

Fights broke out and a stunned Springbok side were aghast to find on the field, when the game had been called off and the protestors had left the ground, home-made missiles consisting of tennis balls that had been slit open, filled with tacks or glass shards, and then lightly glued back together to be thrown onto the field where they would split and spill their contents.

Peaceful protest it was no longer and a militant element, willing to risk life and limb, had taken charge of the dissent. The great majority of New Zealanders were horror-struck to see such anarchy in their peaceful and tolerant land.

It seemed the Springbok rugby team would be sent home but the government of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon came to the conclusion that the honour of their proud police force had to be preserved and that they could not bend before such blatant lawlessness.

Emergency plans were drawn up. The police force had to be seen to be in charge, the Springboks had to be kept safe from harm, rugby stadiums and clubs had to be protected and, New Zealand being dedicated to the proper principles of democracy, the rights of all had to be preserved – both those of supporters who wanted to watch the rugby and those who wanted to protest against the tour.

Specialized squads – which became known as the Red, Blue and White squads – were in put in place to throw a cordon of steel around the Springboks and it was decided that the safest places in which to guard the team, especially in the larger cities for test matches, would be within the confines of stadium dressing rooms.

The situation reminded me of what it must have been like for the generation of my parents when the world went to war. You don’t know what to expect, you feel fear and trepidation, you wonder at the underlying reasons but you get on with it – adapting to each new situation. The Springboks, many of whom had experienced military conscription in South Africa, coped extremely well in conditions they were poorly prepared for and unlike anything any sports team had to face before.

And so, to the final test of a fraught tour. There was also some rugby and the touring team, having lost the first test in Christchurch, defied the odds and won the second – thus leaving all to play for in the decider at Auckland’s Eden Park.

Massive protests in the streets of Auckland. Demonstrators wearing motorcycle helmets and armed with all kinds of implements, from baseball bats to crowbars, clash in the streets as outnumbered policemen battle mightily to prevent an encroachment into the stadium.

But the game will go on. It will start on time. The All Blacks have been bussed in early and the Springboks of course are already there.

Then… a light aircraft, a little high-winged Cessna, passes low, from left to right as the grandstand faces, over the field. It seems to be dropping pamphlets (obviously anti-tour) but then other objects too. Big white blotches appear on the field. Word filters out that the plane is dropping “bombs” consisting of brown paper packets filled with flour.

The game goes on and the little aircraft continues circling, each time ejecting more “Flour Bombs” and sometimes getting so low that the crowd on the embankment facing its approach throw bottles at it. It’s engine screams as it battles to dip and climb over the uprights and the crowd on the open embankment and there are fears that it might crash into the terraces – a thought that seems not to occur to the spectators who continue to hurl objects and abuse at the plane.

A flour bomb hits All Black Gary Knight square on the head and knocks him down. In the midst of the chaos, it seems there was some ironic humour. Later a story emerges that All Black No8 Murray Mexted rushed up to the medics attending to Knight shouting “don’t put water on him, it will set!”

The Welsh referee, Clive Norling, feels he should call time after Knight is hit but both captains say “play on!”

Clouds of flour dust swirl around, flares are thrown onto the field and police and stewards rush in with long-handled spades to remove them or to tackle protestors who have somehow breached the rolled barbed wire cordon around the field.

The All Blacks, with the strafing plane at their backs, take a commanding lead but the Springboks fight back to square the score – wing Ray Mordt writing his name into history with a hattrick of tries; the first by a Springbok against the All Blacks.

Now the referee allows an inordinate amount of extra time and finally the All Blacks’ fullback Allan Hewson, a whisp of a man, kicks a controversial penalty to give his side victory. Joy for the All Blacks, devastation for the Springboks as dusk settles on an apocalyptic scene – a battle field rather than a rugby field. Outside the confines of the stadium a battered city, police and demonstrators start to pick up the pieces.

It is doubtful whether even Steven Spielberg could have come up with a script to rival the actual occurrences that swept the length and breadth of pastoral New Zealand and which came to an unimaginably dramatic climax at Eden Park.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Unsurprisingly the rugby international played on 12 September 1981 at Eden Park in New Zealand became known as the Flour Bomb Test and fixtures that preceded it as the Flour Bomb Tour.

The circular pattern in which the pilot, Marx Jones, flew his small, high-winged Cessna aircraft over Eden Park was symbolic of the concentric and ever-widening emotional, political and attitudinal ripples caused by the Springbok tour that would be felt around the world.

In his effort to disrupt, perhaps even have stopped, a rugby test between the All Blacks and the Springboks, Jones’ heroic, or idiotic, deed, depending on which side of the great debate over whether the tour should have gone ahead or not one fell, would become emblematic of events that, even four decades on, defy belief.

New Zealand History, the official historical website of the NZ Government, under the headline “A country divided” records it as follows: “For 56 days in July, August and September 1981, New Zealanders were divided against each other in the largest civil disturbance seen since the 1951 waterfront dispute. More than 150,000 people took part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centres, and 1500 were charged with offences stemming from these protests.

“To some observers it might seem inconceivable that the cause of this unrest was the visit to New Zealand of the South African rugby team (the Springboks). Although not a major sport on a global scale, rugby had established itself not only as New Zealand’s number one sport but as a vital component in this country’s national identity. In many ways the playing of rugby took a back seat in 1981, and the sport suffered in the following years as players and supporters came to terms with the fallout from the tour.”

It is indisputable that the tour polarised opinions throughout the pastoral two-island nation in the South Pacific. It pitted husband against wife, father against son, brother against brother, split families, stressed the New Zealand police force and revealed fissures in the country’s society that shocked citizens – no matter the opinion they held.

The waves of dissent would reach the office of the President of the United States (then Ronald Reagan), the international Olympic movement, course through American society, alter New Zealand’s social order, bring down NZ Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s government and have a profound effect on the system of government in South Africa.

As is stated on the New Zealand government’s website of momentous record: “Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in February 1990 and inaugurated as president of South Africa on 10 May 1994 after the republic’s first fully democratic elections. The 1981 tour was part of a long process that led to this significant change in South Africa, and in this respect, it represented New Zealand's contribution towards a major international development in the closing decades of the 20th century.”

There can be little doubt that the tour played an important role in the crumbling of Apartheid. As Abe Williams, the team’s assistant manager, who had decided it was “better to fight the system from within,” so aptly put it in his memoir of the tour it was “the bridge of change.”

There were many layers of conviction surrounding the tour – from young men simply determined to reach the pinnacle of their sport to deeply committed crusaders for human rights, from champions of law and order to global political gladiators – but the effect it had, the mark it left, is undeniable.

After ’81 the Springboks were effectively cast into deep isolation. They played just one official series – against England at home in 1984 – and so-called rebel matches against the South American Jaguars, the NZ Cavaliers and a “World XV” in the decade between 1981 and re-admission in 1992.

However, they were denied participation in the first two Rugby World Cups in 1987 and 1991.

In October 1988, members of the ANC met with Dr Danie Craven, Dr Louis Luyt and other rugby officials in Harare, in Zimbabwe, to forge an agreement that appeared “to have set a precedent which could transform all South African sport.”

The negotiations were geared toward developing truly non-racial sports policies, and after two days the parties emerged with an agreement to develop national non-racial sports bodies with the centrepiece being the development of a non-racial rugby board that would become the official board for South African rugby, including the Springboks.

Among those representing the ANC and the non-racial South African Rugby Union were future South African president, Thabo Mbeki, and future minister of sport Steve Tshwete, who had in 1981 been head of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Ireland.

On 20 March 1992 rugby unity was achieved following covert negotiations between the old South African Rugby Board (SARB), the banned ANC and the South African Rugby Union and SA Rugby Federation. And in August 1992 the Boks and their greatest rivals, the All Blacks, met again at Ellis Park.

Now it is another September, 44 years on, and the Springboks will play the All Blacks at Eden Park in what has been described as the most significant rugby test outside of a World Cup Final.

Apart from two draws – against the 1994 Springboks and the 2017 B&I Lions – the All Blacks have not lost at Eden Park in 50 games.

As New Zealand, like South Africa and Australia, has a number of test venues the Springboks have played only 10 tests at Eden Park. The Boks won the first, 9-5 in 1921, and also the next in 1937 when a Springbok team described “as the best rugby team ever to leave the shores of New Zealand,” scored a remarkable 17-6 victory; scoring five 3-point tries to nil.

The Springboks have not won since, but did draw in 1994 in the last match of their first tour back to NZ after 1981.

Given what’s gone before it seems inevitable that Eden Park will produce more drama when the greatest rivals meet again. Will Rassie Erasmus, the worker of miracles, pull another rabbit out of the hat or will the All Blacks reassert their recent dominance and avenge their one-point defeat in the 2023 Rugby World Cup Final?

Oh yes. The quote. The 1994 Springboks, under Ian McIntosh and Francois Pienaar, had already arrived in New Zealand when the All Blacks played France at Eden Park – the last time the men in black lost a game at what to Kiwis is a spiritual shrine.

The Boks had played, and beaten, Southland in Invercargill on the Friday before the test and watched on television as the Tricolores scored their famous 23-20 victory.

With three minutes of the match remaining the All Blacks kicked deep to try run down the clock. French captain Philippe Saint-Andre’s, aptly as it turned out, decided to launch a counter-attack from his own 22 and 65 seconds later, after many passes, changes of angle and French flair at its best Jean-Luc Sadourny dived over for the winning try.

Saint-Andre later described the score as “the try from the end of the world.”

An interesting sidenote is that Jonah Lomu, whose defensive weaknesses were exposed by the French, was dropped after this test. He was recalled for the World Cup in South Africa in 1995 and the rest of course is history.

PS: I had always thought Eden Park had a religious connotation - a holy place where New Zealanders worship. Turns it was named after George Eden - the first and last Earl of Auckland – who, according to one wry comment, “lent his name to a city he never visited and a sports ground he never knew existed.”

Sometimes you just happen to know things and I was able to answer an offbeat question at a rugby gathering.

Why is it (a touchdown) called a try when it’s worth five points?

The quick answer is that it has nothing to do with three, even though it used to, but one has to reach back to the early and mid-1800s when rugby sprouted from football to find the genesis of what is now universally called a try.

And such a search will also reveal another myth which is patently enshrined as fact.

That rugby sprung from football, hence why so many unions and clubs have RFU or RFC (Rugby Football Union or Rugby Football Club) as part of their name, is undisputable.

That the game, as we know it, took its name from Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, is also fact but the real beginnings of the game are murky.

Popular legend is that a pupil at Rugby School, one William Webb Ellis, “WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL
AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THE RUGBY GAME,” (the inscription of a plaque in his memory at the school), in 1823 spawned a new game with this single rebellious act.

However, a number of historians have cast doubt that it was indeed Webb Ellis who invented the game that took on his school’s name. The claim that Webb Ellis created the game did not surface until four years after his death (in 1872), and doubts have been raised about the story since 1895 when the Old Rugbeian Society first investigated it. The committee conducting the investigation was "unable to procure any first-hand evidence of the occurrence" that rugby sprung from Webb Ellis (if indeed it was he) picking up the ball and running with it.

Amazing then that the Golden Grail of rugby, the World Cup or the Webb Ellis Cup, might be based on a piece of fiction. (Note: The golden trophy is inscribed The Webb Ells Cup, not the William Webb Ellis Trophy as one so often sees. Another oddity is that it also bears the legend The International Rugby Football Board although the controlling authority has since been renamed World Rugby).

What has been established is that were also a few different catch-run-and-pass games played at other schools such as Winchester and Cheltenham Colleges and that a more formalised game developed so that inter-schools matches could be played.

In fact, when in 1861 George Ogilvie, principal of Diocesan College (Bishops) in Cape Town introduced a version of football to South Africa with which he was familiar it was the Winchester Game played at his old school in Hampshire.

His nickname was Gog and the game played at the Cape was often referred to as Gog’s Game or Gogball. Bishops got the Cape playing football of this kind, starting with their first rivals South African College. (SACS)

Public schools in England had their own form of a ball-carrying game but the type played at Rugby school gradually became the most popular and as greater similarities became needed, to enable competitive matches between educational institutions, it was the Rugby variety that came to be known as, well, rugby.

So why is a try not a tri?

Cheltenham College is credited with developing the initial rugby scoring system, which was adopted by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in 1886.

Initially the aim of a game was to touch the ball down between the posts for a team to be able to “TRY” for a kick at goal, which, if successful, resulted in points being scored. Emphasis was placed on kicking or punting and the touchdown was the means to earn the right for a “try at goal.” The French call a touchdown “essai” – to try.

Rugby adopted H-shaped goalposts with a crossbar around the 1830s. This change was driven by the need to define a clearer scoring method, particularly for kicks over the crossbar.

Rugby School boys were in the habit of modifying the rules (as rugby still does!) with each new year which meant constant reshaping of the game. One thing that remained constant was 15 players in a team although in the early days the breakdown was nine forwards and six backs. Substitutions did not come into vogue until much later and mushroomed to eight, more than half a team, in modern times.

The method of accumulating points changed many times over the years. At the outset it was 3 points for a goal, 1 point for a try, 2 points for a conversion (which obviously could not be taken without having earned the right “to try,” no points for a penalty, 3 points for a drop and 3 points for a goal from a mark.

Emphasis was placed on kicking the ball, but clearly the notion took hold that there should be greater differentiation from football; that in a catching-and-passing game the essence should be to carry the ball over the line.

In 1889 the value of a try was upped to 2 points, cut back to 1 point in 1891– the year of South Africa’s first internationals against Bill Maclagan’s pioneering “British Isles” touring side. However, the South Africans did not score a single point in the three tests.

In 1893 the value of a try was moved to 3 points.

The next tour to South Africa was in 1896 and in the second test against John Hammond’s side at the Wanderers in Johannesburg Theo Samuels of the De Beers club in Griqualand West had the distinction of scoring South Africa’s first and second test tries, worth 3 points. A conversion by David Cope (Diggers, Transvaal) of the second try was SA’s first successful kick in Test matches.

A try worth 3 points? Unsurprisingly in Afrikaans scoring a try became a “drie” (“druk ń drie”) and the perception that it meant three became ingrained in the patois of the game.

In 1971 a try became worth 4 points and in 1992, 5 points – but the name of the action never morphed into a four or a five – perhaps a quin? – or even ‘’ń vier’’ or ‘’ń vyf’’.

Jan Ellis (United, Windhoek, SWA) scored SA’s last 3-point try against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 7 August 1971; a test won 18-6 by the Springboks.

When in 1972 the try value moved to 4 points SA played only one Test, losing 9-18 to England at Ellis Park without scoring a try.

It would take three more Tests before the Springboks would register their first 4-point try – the distinction falling to centre Peter Cronje who dotted down in the drawn final Test (13-13) against the all-conquering 1974 Lions, led by Willie John McBride, at Ellis Park on 27 July.

In the first three Tests the Lions won 12-3, 28-9 and 26-9 while scoring eight tries to nil. In the last test Cronje’s solitary try was edged by tries by Andy Irvine and Roger Uttley (a score which photographic evidence showed should not have been awarded as Chris Pope had clearly pressed the ball down in goal before Uttley dived on it) – thus providing a hard-to-believe series tally of 10 tries to 1.

Michael du Plessis scored SA’s last 4-point try against a World Invitation XV at Ellis Park on 2 September 1989 in a match won 22-16 by the Springboks. Johan Heunis also crossed the line. The first test in a two-match series was won, 20-19, by the Springboks at Newlands.

An anomaly was that with South Africa in sports isolation and paying the price for the Nationalist government’s Apartheid policies caps were awarded for these two games.

In 1992 the value of a try was upped to 5 points and to Danie Gerber fell the honour of scoring the first Springbok try worth five points in the first post-isolation international against New Zealand at Ellis Park on 15 August 1992.

In a Test lost 24-27 by the Springboks, Gerber added another and Pieter Müller also got a five-pointer.

The conversation that gave rise to this column took place at the launch of Alan and AB Zondagh’s coaching manual, ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK, who, by drawing on decades of experience across multiple professional teams, set out their belief that rugby should be an attacking game – that the primary aim of all teams must be to TRY to score a TRY!

*This book by Alan & AB Zondagh is now available on www.az-rugby.com

Surrounded by people in green Springbok jerseys in my favourite pub, Barristers in Newlands, a quiz question occurred to me to ask the gathered group. Why IS the Springbok jersey green?

I popped the question to my companions and was surprised that no-one knew.

The next day, while watching the Boks playing the Barbarians, I tried again and again no-one knew.

So, I told the story of the provenance of the green jersey and, as happens, was asked to relay the tale again to newcomers.

So why is the Springbok green? Why is our blood green? Why do we have Green Friday when numerous fans, from kids at school to folks out shopping or having a pint, sport their replica jerseys in our beloved colour. Why has SA Rugby decided that Springboks’ rallying cry to the conclusion of the next Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2027 will be "Forever Green, Forever Gold?"

It is quite apt that these reminisces should be in the first week of July and be linked to the presence of the hodgepodge Barbarians, for 134 years ago a ship called the Dunottar Castle docked in Cape Town carrying a motley crew of English and Scottish rugby players.

Under the captaincy of W.E. (Bill) Maclagan this band of pioneers, assembled from players from Cambridge University and various counties, were much like the Barbarians in that the passport to travel to Cape Town was dependant on whether you were available or not – the big difference, of course, being that while they were wined and dined and entertained at many “smoking concerts” they were not paid.

Maclagan’s men were to lay the foundation for an international sporting activity at which South Africa was destined to become very good.

The 1891 tourists from the “British Isles” played 20 matches in all, including three against South Africa which in years to come would be classed our first internationals or Tests. Maclagan’s team won all three tests without conceding a point.

The die had been cast. The trek to the “colonies” was such a success that five years later another, more structured tour in terms of team selection and fixtures, was organised under the captaincy of John Hammond, who had been the vice-captain in Maclagan’s team.

However, in the internationals the armband would go to legendary Irishman Tommy Crean; the star of the team who five years later, in 1991, would be severely wounded in the Battle of Elandslaagte during the Second Boer War and later earn the Victoria Cross for his bravery at the Battle of Tygerskloof near Bethlehem.

The 1896 tourists played four tests and won the first three. It was in the last international, played at Newlands on September 5, that the colour green was first sewn into the fabric of South African rugby.

For this Test Barry “Fairy” Heatlie, a formidable forward and kicker of the ball (then considered a major attribute) who had played against Maclagan’s side and the first test against Morrison’s team was named as captain.

A Bishops boy and a major figure in Western Province rugby, Fairy Heatlie – his nickname, which today would surely not be considered proper, was said to have been conferred on him by a Bishops master who, on hearing the bulky Heatlie, wearing the boots which were considered de rigueur in those days, stomping about in the classroom above his exclaimed “pray, whose fairy footsteps go there?” – had been part of starting a club called the Old Diocesans RFC.

Seeing as Bishops, correctly Diocesans College, played in dark blue it was decided that the senior club should play in a different colour and, according to legend, it was Heatlie’s wife who decided that the club’s jerseys would be dyed myrtle green – perhaps for no other reason that the dye was freely available.

As was the norm in those days, Heatlie arranged for “his” South African team to play in the green jerseys he supplied and, thus kitted out, they went on to win their country’s first ever rugby Test match – prevailing 5-0 to hand the Brits their only defeat on tour.

South Africa was by now on the map as a rugby destination for the four Home Unions and the next tour by a team from the British Isles, led by Mark Morrison, was scheduled for 1903; 22 matches including three Tests.

Heatlie played in the first at the Wanderers in Johannesburg but not was not the captain – an honour given to Freddie Aston who was a brother of R.L. Aston who was one of the stars of the trail-blazing 1891 one team.

The big Bishops boy was unable to play in the second Test in Kimberley – the South Africans, according to faded records, apparently playing in Griqualand West jerseys with the “Diamond” badge either blocked out or removed – because of the birth of one of his children in Cape Town.

The third international, at Newlands on September 12, 1903, thus stands out “as one of the real mileposts in the history of South African rugby,” according Chris Greyvenstein in his seminal work, “Springbok Saga,” because Heatlie was brought back as captain.

He again opted for the green Diocesan Old Boys jerseys, even though the club had ceased to exist, as the outfitters had some stocks left. He presented the team with these jerseys, black shorts and, as there were no socks available, he obtained consent from his club, Villager RFC, to wear their scarlet stockings.

The first two Tests had been drawn, but resplendent in these outfits, the South Africans hit their straps to win impressively, 8-0, thus winning the country’s first “rubber” or series.

South Africa had thus won its first Test as well as its first series in the green jerseys provided by Barry Heatlie.

However, thanks to the painstaking work of the late Prof Piet van der Schyff, honorary historian of SARU, who preserved and sifted through the minutes of SA Rugby Board meetings it was later revealed that the motivation for South Africa’s national rugby team to play in green predated the famous series victory presided over by Heatlie.

With the 1903 British rugby team’s tour having been confirmed, Gerald Orpen, on March 24, on behalf of the Transvaal Rugby Union, at a general meeting of the Board moved that uniform colours should be worn by SA representative sides – these colours would “consist of olive green jerseys with gold collar, and on the left breast embroidered in natural colour, a springbok; navy blue knickers, dark blue stockings with green and gold band on the top.”

Representatives agreed with the motion that there should be uniformity but there was some disagreement on what these colours should be. However, on May 6 – Morrison’s tourists were not due in the country until July – a motion by H.C. Wood (Eastern Province), supported by G.C. Anderson (Natal), to the effect “that the SA Colours be: Green jersey, with white collar, and Springbuck (sic), in natural colour, on left breast, black knickers, and blue stockings with 2 white stripes at the top,” was accepted.

From this it can be deducted that the South African team (not yet called the Springboks) were meant to have played in the new strip in the series against the 1903 British Isles team.

However, a problem arose. Manufacturing the jerseys proved to be easier said than done. On June 9, a month after the motion was accepted, the Board’s minutes noted a decision “to try and get the SA colours locally if possible; if not, to leave them over to a later date.”

Although the first test was not until August 26 the approved colours were not ready. In the first Test in Johannesburg plain white jerseys were used (not the Transvaal jersey) and in the second the Griqua jersey; but without the diamond badge.

Then, in the final Test on September 12, the South African team wore Heatlie’s Old Diocesan green jerseys and that clinched it. Having won SA’s first Test and first series in green jerseys there was just no way anyone was going to go back on green. (I could not help but pick up on the coincidence that the storied Flour Bomb Test between the Springboks and the All Blacks at Eden Park in Auckland was played on September 12, 1981.)

Early in 1904 Heatlie was a prime mover in having a “Cap” added to the attire as a lasting mark of recognition for those who turned out in a Test. It was decided that cap would be “green, with gold trimmings, and a small Springbok with the letters S & A on either side of it, and date underneath, in front.”

Instituting a “Cap” in effect postdated the awarding of Springbok colours to all those who had represented their country, from 1891 onwards.

Another problem to emerge was a delay in getting a suitable design for the Springbok; both the leaping one on the jersey and the head for the cap. Eventually the Board’s secretary A.V. Solomon contacted German-born lithographic artist Heinrich Egersdörfer, based in Woodstock, and it was he who came up with designs that satisfied the Board.

The next great episode in South Africa’s rugby history was the 1906 tour to Great Britain and Ireland. This time it was decided to have the jerseys made in England and in stepped John Hammond, a member of the 1891 touring group, captain of the 1896 team and manager of the 1903 tourists to see that the manufacturing process went smoothly and that the jerseys would be ready in time.

Paul Roos, after whom one of the country’s most famous schools in Stellenbosch is named, was made captain of the 1906 team and it was he who bestowed the name by which South African rugby teams would be forever known. On being asked by the British Press how they should refer to his team, Roos replied, “call us de Springbokken.”

Their predecessors were awarded colours and since then their successors have been known as the Springboks.

The green jersey, with white collar, and black shorts remained in place until the 1937 tour to New Zealand when one of the greatest Springbok teams ever was the first to sport a gold collar and white shorts. I have been unable to find a reason for the change, although when uniform colours were first mooted the original suggestion was a gold (deep yellow) collar.

During the 1938 series against the British Lions in South Africa, black shorts were reverted to but after that the green-and-gold jersey with white shorts has been in place – apart from, it has to be said, certain appalling abominations in recent years.

Why the Springbok? Although never set out in detail it is endemic to South and South West Africa (Namibia) (south of the Limpopo River) and, well, our Bokkie is arguably the most beautiful gazelle of all. The famous hunter William Cornwallis Harris had some vivid sketches of the Springbok in his book “Portraits of the game and wild animals of South Africa.”

· “The Springbok is measurelessly the most elegant and remarkable species of the comprehensive group to which it pertains… one of the most beautiful objects in the animal creation.”

· “Fleet as the wind… wariest of the wary… with a lightness and grace absolutely unrivalled.”

· “… hundreds of delicately formed antelope bound away, with meteor-like and sportive velocity, winging their bird-like flight by a quick succession of those singularly elastic leaps, which enable it to surpass as well in swiftness as in grace, almost every other four-footed animal.”

Small wonder the old-timers felt it should be the badge of our rugby team.

Acknowledgments: To those who dedicatedly recorded the history referred to in this article. Chris Greyvenstein, author of “Springbok Saga,” Teddy Shnaps, for many years SA Rugby’s official statistician, Prof Piet van der Schyff, historian of the SA Rugby Union and Paul Dobson, beloved teacher at Bishops, father of Stormers coach John and rugby chronicler of note.

With the seemingly interminable northern hemisphere club rugby season now at an end (but for France), to be replaced by a crowded list of international fixtures, I am writing this of my own free will and am fully aware of any consequences.

And no, I am not about to libel anyone; just establishing a marker for my thoughts and confirming the principle that in whatever activity one undertakes there are risks, dangers and unforeseen and unexpected outcomes one should be aware of and take responsibility for – whether that be to buy and operate a motorbike or a sportsperson making a decision to play rugby.

It is a rough-and-tumble game which Bordeaux Bègles, Bath and Leinster played best by, in the words favoured by the coaches and some team members of the winners of the last two World Cups, “physically fucking up” their opponents.

And they did so mostly by being off-sides – consistently and more energetically than were the opponents who fell by the wayside as the Champions Cup, English Premiership and URC tournaments reached their climaxes.

My view that union has become an ugly, and horribly corrupted, game was confirmed by league play and the run-in to all three competitions and bolstered my conviction that rugby is now a messy hybrid of what it is intended to be.

The high ideals set out in the Law Book (“Rugby owes much of its appeal to the fact that it is played both to the letter and within the spirit of the laws”) have been sullied and it is long overdue that the statutes are re-visited, modified (where necessary), simplified and re-written to once again arrive by a sport that is understood by all – those who administer it, those who officiate it, those who coach it, those who play it and those who watch it.

One of the remedies I would propose is revising the off-side line as this would have a chain effect on improving other maladies such as delaying the ball at mauls and the endless ping-pong of box-kicks.

The hindmost foot law is pretty much non-existent these days with the result that defenders are constantly “up in the faces” of attackers which leads to a fear of attack, plenty of kicking (as passing is too risky) and blatant obstruction.

With players having become bigger, stronger and faster the field has effectively become smaller; meaning that space is more constricted even without players being constantly off-sides.

There are already rules governing how far from scrums and lineouts outside players must be (often not adhered to), but a good start would be to decree that there should be a clear gap of two metres at rucks and mauls – i.e. clear space with outside defenders not allowed to advance until the ball is played from the base. Touch judges must take up positions to indicate this space and at big stadiums on big occasions VAR can be employed.

With more room on the field teams would be encouraged to “use” the ball more – i.e. pass it – and it would also eliminate the scrumhalf (who mostly is the passer) needing to kick because of a looming defender or herding players in front of him into a truck-and-trailer formation for more protection.

Incidentally, as an aside, when a player (normally the scrumhalf) puts his hands (even his foot, it might be argued) on the ball he by rights should be penalised for hands in the ruck, if he does not play the ball immediately, or he can be targeted by a defender. This stipulation is still part of the law governing rucks; but then the ruck is a part of the game that is still written exactly as it always has been in the Law Book but which is simply not refereed according to requirements the of the stated rules.

It is significant how many former players agree that “we should return to rucking” mainly because players have to be on their feet and more of them are pulled into the breakdown zone – i.e. again leaving more space to attack plus making for a faster game.

The essentials are that a ruck is formed when at least one player from each team are in contact, on their feet and over the ball which is on the ground. Possession may be won either by rucking (raking the ball back with a foot) or by pushing the opposing team off the ball.

Once a ruck has formed, no player may handle the ball, (my italics) rather than the current situation where players, in touch with opponents or off their feet, keep their hands on the ball or the scrumhalf is allowed to roll the ball or adjust it in his hands until he is ready to kick.

Get into any discussion with someone who knows the game and the fault lines will quickly come to the fore.

For the sake of brevity here are just some:

· Introduce a larger off-sides line to be policed by touch judges.

· The forward pass in which a referee has to compute whether the ball has left the passer’s hands forward is an abomination. The law should simply be that the player who receives the ball must be behind the player who passed to him.

· Go back to the ruck and referee it as it is meant to be.

· Curtail the influence of the TMO.

· Formulate clearer guidelines as to what institutes a head collision. More leeway on accidental or unavoidable contact. Greater concentration on the ball carrier to stop him leading with the head – an aspect that has quickly accelerated and become the norm as a means of making it harder to be tackled for fear of hitting the head.

· Be stricter on the “jackler.” The man who makes the tackle may not stand up and grab the ball and the moment he makes touch with an opponent he must get his hands out.

· Ban the driving maul. Five, six players ahead of the ball is legalised obstruction.

· Referees must complete a “scrum school.” This can be done by getting scrummaging experts to coach referees on the international panel about the dynamics and forces of the frontrow and then get them to pass on this knowledge. Too often one sees the wrong player penalised at scrum time.

· Get rid of the goal line dropout. Not a good idea, not fair and it has not worked.

· Players joining a ruck or a maul must do say with their backs to their own goal line. No more hitting in the side on an oblique angle.

· Players who move through the median line in a maul must drop out of the melee and get back onsides. No “staying attached” to disguise offsides.

· Instruct referees to use their whistles to control games rather than the growing propensity for them to “coach” teams or shout instructions.

· And, harking back to the start of this piece, introduce an indemnity requirement at all levels of the game in which players (or the parents of underage players on their behalf) affirm that they are competing in rugby of their own free will.

There is much more that needs the attention the new chairman of the Board, Australia’s Dr Brett Robinson (bet you thought it was still Sir Bill Beaumont!), and the time has come for a complete overhaul of the Law Book rather than any more trials, experiments or law variations.

Key however must be the composition of the committee selected to pick apart the laws, find the flaws, and stitch them back together. The group should consist of experienced coaches, seasoned players, veteran referees plus representation from other levels of the game.

When its all done it would be good to call in the like of Rassie Erasmus, Eddie Jones and Fabian Galthie, astute, inventive and maverick coaches, and say to them “if we did this do you see any dodges; ways in which you might tweak or circumvent the laws?”

The aim should be to promote an attacking game – running, passing, scoring tries – and once in place there should be a moratorium of at least five years before any other changes are considered.

We need a game which is fair and in which there is space to attack; a game in which a referee can hold up rugby’s “bible” and say to any inquisitor, “sorry you don’t know the laws but I blew the book.”

The biggest problem with rugby at the moment is that it is offsides. Completely and utterly offsides… but that’s not all.

The game has become unintelligible. You could put a number of referees in the same match situation and you’re likely to get as many rulings or interpretations as there are officials.

For those of us who watch from afar the inconsistency is maddening, but imagine what it must be like for coaches and players, especially the professional ones, trying to make sense of muddled laws on a match-by-match basis.

Apart from erratic application, or non-application, of certain rules the interactions I have had with people who know a lot more about the game than I do and others who watch and follow it dedicatedly, the biggest reason of all for the frustration is off-sides – never more so than in the dire match between the Sharks and the Scarlets; won 12-3 by the home side and not a try scored.

It’s not a blinkered depends-who-you support thing. All teams, in no matter what country or competition, are consistently and persistently off-sides.

The hindmost foot laws at the breakdown (rucks and mauls) are not applied (or at scrums and lineouts) and defenders are almost always ahead of the barrier line – they don’t stray there, they take up their positions in an off-sides position.

The upshot is that the game is being choked. There is so little space to encourage attack that teams have resorted to kicking (mostly the relentless box-kick), the crash-ball and committing obstruction in an effort to shield attackers from flat-lying defenders.

So, while administrators say they want a more open, ball-in-play game the way the laws are applied, or have been tweaked, promotes the opposite.

I am not as attached to rugby as I once was when, like a professional coach or player, it was my work but I still have many much-valued connections such as David Campese, Ray Mordt and Alan Zondagh – two of the greatest wings to play the game and a vastly experienced coach who has made a life-long study of rugby.

The trio agree that the laws are unclear, ambiguous or inconsistent, leading to confusion and difficulty in application, interpretation or understanding and that many of the experimental law trials or variations have, in fact, led to greater confusion.

Campese, whose attacking instincts and unorthodoxy stood out in a golden era of Wallaby rugby, had an instant, and telling, answer to the question ‘what is the one thing you’d like to change in rugby in a moment?’

“There’s lots I’d love to change,” said Campo although he did agree that off-sides is a major problem. “Everyone’s off-sides – often at kick-offs too. What about the number of forward passes? The scrums take too long, eat up too much time. There are too many stoppages, let it be controlled by the forwards as it always was.

“The advantage law needs to be looked at. A team can go through multiple phases and make metres but then the ref goes back to the penalty because there was a knock-on. You get three phases to use the ball and then it is play on. It will eliminate a lot of time wasting.

“The goal line drop-out must go. There should be some reward for having actually crossed the opponent’s line in spite of the ball being held up. It is something that just hasn’t worked,” said Campo; I had set his mind racing.

It was the same for Ray Mordt who, apart from his try-scoring deeds accumulated much coaching experience as a Currie Cup-winning coach of Transvaal and as a member of Kitch Christie’s 1995 Springbok World Cup back-up team.

Ray, too, could immediately list a number of problematic laws but agreed that relentless off-sides was a blight on the game.

Although loath to advocate more experimentation he felt union could take a leaf from league’s book to ensure more space on the field by legislating a clear no-go zone at the points of contact. There are regulations for scrums and lineouts but it is the “hindmost foot” provision at rucks and mauls that is most often transgressed – to the extent that in some games it seems not to be in play at all.

Ray feels a solution might be to adopt a rule from Rugby League that there has to be a clear gap, currently 10m in League, between forwards and backs at set-pieces and breakdowns. Ray, who had a decorated career with Wigan while playing League in the 80s, suggests a gap of five metres in Union (other than of course when play is right on the goal line) and says touch judges can serve as markers by taking up positions to indicate where the off-sides line is. “We used to check where the TJ was and line up in line with him,” Ray recalled.

An added mechanism to ensure that teams “keep the space” could be to employ football’s VAR (video assistant referee) technology in which a virtual line can be placed across the field to check for off-sides, but this would only be possible at big broadcast matches as additional equipment and operators are needed; and I’m not sure the game needs something else to hold up play!

No, simply make the touch judges (okay, assistant referees) more active and get them to indicate the off-sides line and flag it when it is transgressed.

As with Campo, Ray could point out other possible improvements, such as an off-field time keeper to make sure that game time is filled with play time, but was averse to adding more experimentation.

Alan Zondagh learnt his rugby at the feet of Dr Danie Craven and went from being a first-class player to a top-class coach with a number of leading teams, from Western Province and Northern Transvaal (the Blue Bulls) to Saracens, who made a lifetime study of rugby by spending time with and analysing the methods of coaches from other countries and then passing on this knowledge at his Rugby Performance Centre in Riebeek-Kasteel in the Cape winelands.

Alan, who is still active in rugby as Head Coach of South Africa’s oldest club Hamiltons, is perplexed at how rugby laws have evolved into a mishmash of what is meant to be, what is no longer applied and erratically ruled experiments.

Alan and his son AB, himself a top coach who is currently the attack coach at French club Lyon, have collaborated in a soon-to-be in print book which will be manual for coaches and players alike as it focusses on what should be the main aim of the game – how to attack.

For Alan rugby has strayed far from the game it is meant to be and most of his recommendations focus on how to create more space to encourage attacking play.

Like David and Ray, Alan and AB believe there is no quick fix and a chapter in their book deals with how the laws can be improved.

Alan was the first to bring to my attention how the scrum, one of rugby union’s defining facets, has evolved from being a means to gain possession to a way to get an enhanced penalty. Let’s dub it the “double jeopardy penalty.” A team, blessed with the stronger set-piece, successfully scrums for a penalty; often in situations of concerted defence. The penalty is awarded, they kick to touch and then also get the throw-in – i.e. a double advantage. Alan argues that the kick to touch, which relieves the pressure, is advantage enough and that also getting the throw-in is like getting another a penalty.

By not getting the throw-in as well teams might well be encouraged to try to use the ball – surely the aim of the game - rather than opting to kick for touch.

This is just one of many aspects that Alan’s close immersion in the game over so many years has brought to the fore; and the blight of entrenched off-sides is high up on the list.

A former leading referee such as Nigel Owens, in my book one of the best, these days writes regular online articles in which he runs the rule over controversial, odd, incorrect or spurious rulings by his former colleagues. His opinions are balanced and sympathetic, but it must surely be a concern to administrators that each week’s series of matches in whatever country throws up something for him to pick over – the overt influence of TMOs, the goal line drop-out, depowering the scrum, sacking the maul, institutionalized off-sides, inconsistent rulings… you name it.

The game is a mess but, as someone put it to me, “it’s as though World Rugby are standing by watching their house on fire and doing nothing about it.”

It’s time to get out the metaphoric hoses, connect them to the hydrants, and put out the flames by simplifying and re-writing the Law Book.

It is wickedly in keeping with the utter complication into which rugby’s laws have degenerated that a disgraced referee should unwittingly become the flag bearer for why change is needed.

Italian referee Andrea Piardi has recently been caught in the spotlight because of incidents highlighting the complexity of how rugby’s laws are applied and, instead of being supported by officialdom, seems to have been made the scapegoat for the way rugby union laws have spiraled into a morass of contradictions.

Piardi, supported by nine other office-bearers, was the referee in charge when Stormers captain and prop Neethling Fouche ended up being most unfairly and irrationally suspended for four weeks and he was again the whistle blower (irony intended) in a URC match between Munster and the Bulls mired in controversy.

In this game Piardi reduced Munster’s “staff complement” from 15 to 14 after injuries to both Munster’s tighthead props. Starting prop Oli Jager departed the pitch in the first half to undergo an HIA (Head Injury Assessment) which meant he was replaced by Stephen Archer.

It transpired that Jager had failed the HIA and could therefore not return to the field. But then in the second half his replacement, Archer, suffered a contact injury and also had to be taken off.

With both tightheads unable to continue Piardi ordered uncontested scrums and, in addition, instructed Munster to take another player off the field to reduce their number to 14.

But this is where it gets interesting. Piardi seemingly made the right decision. Both props injured – uncontested scrums and Munster, unable to properly contest the scrums, shedding an additional player.

But no. As trumpeted by the Munster favouring media Piardi “made a big blunder,” but in fact all he’d done is strayed into a grey area in the laws pertaining to HIA.

The Munster coaching staff (all credit to them) were aware of a quirk in the HIA regulations and protested that Piardi had made a mistake.

And it turned out that he had. Because the first prop had gone off for an HIA (which he failed) it was deemed to not be a contact injury and, even though Munster could not man up in the scrums, they should not have been reduced to 14 men.

They played one short for some 13 to 14 minutes before Munster’s remonstrations bore fruit with the off-field officials and referee Piardi was informed of his error.

So there you have it. Like the off-sides and ruck laws which are simply not applied the “Injury” in Head Injury Assessment is in fact not an injury. I know, makes no sense. Surely if a player gets sent of the field to be assessed for an injury and he is found to have such an injury he must be injured? My head hurts too.

It was when Piardi explained the situation to the two captains, Tadhg Beirne and Ruan Nortje, that he uttered the words that said it all about what has happened to rugby; “this game has too many rules” – inadvertently compounding his mistake as, of course, rugby has laws.

In the aftermath it transpired Piardi had made another mistake – awarding a try to the Bulls after Cameron Hanekom had tapped the ball on his thigh, instead of a foot, to launch an attack; missed by him, his two assistants and obviously the TMO.

The United Rugby Championship’s administrators clearly decided that Piardi, Italy’s leading referee, was at fault and his punishment was to be omitted entirely from the group when the match officials for the next round of matches were named.

I feel for him. He was right when he said there are just too many rules. The game has become unintelligible, subject to any number of subjective or contradicting opinions and almost impossible for referees to manage consistently correctly – for instance referee Piardi and the rest of us finding out that a Head Injury Assessment is in fact not an injury assessment and, if that is the case, why have it at all?

Yet again another incidence during a series of matches has side-tracked me. Next time I promise to look at some of the laws that should be changed and others that should be blown as they are written in the book.

Having received a good bit of support and interesting views on my column, “The Law is an Ass,” about the utter confusion in rugby’s officiating I was not expecting l’Homme des Cavernes to force his way into the narrative as he once memorably did to an All Blacks Haka.

French forward Sébastien Chabal, with his mass of wild hair and unruly beard, was once described as rugby’s most frightening player and aptly dubbed l'Homme des Cavernes, the Caveman, by “La presse Francaise.”

Remarkable for his ominous presence and ferocious tackling he sparked a threatening march by French players right up to the All Blacks performing the Haka before their quarter-final in Cardiff during the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

It was a potentially incendiary standoff but Chabal’s latest revelations, now 18 years later, plus the course of that controversial knockout game provided perfect touchpoints for some more discussion on the incomprehensible state of rugby’s laws and my belief that the Law Book should be re-written; condensed and simplified.

Another weekend (it does not matter which one), another series of matches across various competitions and again the sheer inconsistency in which rugby’s laws are applied were in focus soon after an egregious miscarriage of justice.

In the Stormers’ URC match against Ulster their captain of the day, Neethling Fouche, was red-carded (by referee Andrea Piardi after consultation with the TMO, but for the sake of this article the identities of the referees are not relevant).

At the time it was a shock decision as the player he was attempting to tackle had dipped, had been knocked off line by the attempted tackle of another Stormers player, had “led” with his head, while Fouche was down on his knee and his left arm was coming up to wrap. To my mind there was minimal head contact and there was no malicious intent; an outright rugby incident. Given the mitigating circumstances it could have been play on, a penalty or, at the upper threshold of potential danger, a yellow card – never a red.

Yet a disciplinary panel of three upheld the red card and banned Fouche for four weeks – adding the usual nonsense about his exemplary record, his contrition and the fact that if he completed a “coaching intervention programme” he would be able to knock a week off his suspension.

As an aside I don’t know how this so-called intervention works; ostensibly “to educate players on safer tackle techniques and improve their overall tackle technique after receiving a red card for dangerous play involving head contact.” Do they have to travel to World Rugby’s headquarters in Dublin, perhaps a penitentiary in London, is it done by their own coaches (how illogical would that be?) or are they locked in a room with a pen and paper and made to write a thousand times: “I must not tackle high.”?

Fouche’s suspension was appealed by the Stormers and another panel of three, led by a senior practitioner of the law, upheld his red card and banning. So a total of 11 officials (the referee, his two assistants and the TMO, the first disciplinary panel and then the appeals panel) decided Fouche was miscreant and sent him down. To say rugby coaches and watchers were gobsmacked would be too weak an expression.

But now comes the rub. A week later, another game, the European Challenge Cup, the Bulls against Edinburgh and “head contact” is again an issue. This time the offender is Bulls’ flanker Jannes Kirsten who gets done for a high tackle and is yellow carded. As with Fouche there is mitigation, player dipping, sudden change of direction, unintentional so the yellow card is borderline – perhaps a penalty only.

But Kirsten goes to the dunce chair and hardly has he returned to the field or commits another high tackle. This time it seems he is guilty as he is upright, he had time to adjust, he does not wrap and there is head contact. Bulls who were in trouble anyway or now in the dwang – two yellows = a red.

But no. Kirsten is let off. Just a penalty. He plays on. The same set of officials came to a completely different decision – one completely at odds with the protocols they’re meant to apply.

And therein lies the real problem with what has become of rugby’s rules (sorry Doc.) There are just too many grey areas, too many options that can be applied in different ways by different minds – too often in different ways by the same minds.

And that is how Sébastien Chabal barged into this think piece. The ferocious Frenchman revealed that he is suffering from significant memory loss after his retirement from the game, possibly due to concussions while the game in which he tried to disrupt the Haka contained a glaring misapplication of the law.

Chabal made shock revelations about his mental health. “I have no memory of a single second of a rugby match I played,” he told an interviewer. “And I don’t remember a single one of the 62 Marseillaises [the French anthem] I experienced.”

Although the maverick Chabal did not mention concussion and added that he had not consulted a doctor World Rugby’s officials would have nodded sagely and said “you see, that’s why we’re doing it.”

Doing what? Making such an issue of head clashes.

And it is an issue. It is claimed upward of 500 players (from union and league) are suing World Rugby for allegedly failing to put in place reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of players – in particular those who suffered blows to the head.

Included in the group are former All Black Carl Hayman, England World Cup winners Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery and former Wales luminary Gavin Henson.

The players are suing for negligence, alleging that governing bodies failed to protect them from the risks of repetitive concussive and sub-concussive blows, leading to neurological conditions such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), early-onset dementia and other impairments.

The class action is still in its pre-trial phase as lawyers from both sides square off demanding medical records and items of evidence. A date for the trial, which will be heard in London, has not yet been set and it seems any hearings are still months away.

World Rugby has however moved to address the problem of head injuries and Head Contact Guidelines have been written into the laws. There are guidelines for referees to apply in the event of a dangerous clash (no arms, shoulder, elbow, head contact) and the HIA (Head Injury Assessment) has become a fact of the modern game.

Yet, as indicated by the Fouche and Kirsten cases (plus many more in almost any matches played in a weekend of rugby) the inconsistency is glaring and often the punishments palpably unfair.

One of the unintended consequences of a player’s head being declared off-limits is that ball carriers quickly learnt to dip and lead with their heads – thus making it almost impossible for a tackler to avoid making contact with the head of the oncoming attacker. It is overdue that administrators put some responsibility on the ball carrier not to expose his head rather than having the onus solely on the tackler; although, that said, imagine the additional conflictions that would cause for referees.

This article was going to be about potential changes to the laws, but l”Homme de Cavernes put paid to that, although he did provide a reminder of a famous (or infamous depending on which country you were supporting) misapplication of the law – one of my most annoying bugbears of all; the forward pass.

In the 2007 World Cup France had suffered a shock defeat to Argentina in the opening game and needed to beat the All Blacks in Cardiff to advance to the semi-finals. The referee was Englishman Wayne Barnes, who would become one of the game’s leading arbiters and who was in charge of the 2023 World Cup Final between the Springboks and the All Blacks, who missed a massive forward pass by Damien Traille to Frederic Michalak which led to the try which won it for the Tricolores.

This error probably contributed to the obsession of TMO’s to look for forward passes in their sworn mission to cancel tries but as I said in my previous piece “just pass the damned thing backwards!”

Many years ago, as a rookie rugby writer, Dr Danie Craven admonished me to always remember that “rugby has laws, all other games have rules.”

Dr Craven, the éminence grise of the oval world for most of the time he was in charge of South African rugby, was a great believer that the Law Book was the covenant of the game he loved so well; even though he was not above allowing his mind to dwell on changes to the edicts that might improve the game or eliminate foibles.

Now deep into the 2024/25 season, the Six Nations done, and after weekend after weekend of odd, puzzling, incorrect or controversial decisions by officials in the various tournaments that get beamed to us, Dr Craven comes to mind because I can just imagine how infuriated he would have been at the absolute chaotic state of the game.

The game is in a mess and has been for some time. The laws are a hodgepodge of statutes that are not adhered to, experiments, variations, trials, adaptations and changes and all, players, coaches, referees and spectators, struggle to come to grips with what is right and what is wrong. Almost each and every game, in whatever competition, produces controversy because the rules (sorry, Doc) simply do not provide a manual for how the game should be played.

In short, and to be blunt, it’s a shitshow. I feel sure that if Doc were still with us he would invoke the name of his dog and shout “Bliksem!” from his office in Stellenbosch if he were to view some of what passes for the law these days.

Much of what is wrong is, most perplexingly, because the law is simply not applied or ignored; the game having segued into a hybrid of what is written in the book rather than being played according to what IS written in the book.

There’s a long list. Let’s start with off-sides which for so long has been my most irritating bugbear. The game has become a static, bludgeoning crash of bodies because so much off-sides is allowed.

· In “The Laws of the Game” it is stated that both at a maul and a ruck (the latter being one of those things that is still in the book but not applied) the hindmost foot of the defending side in any melee dictates the offside line. Yet in every game the defending players are ahead of this hypothetical line, sometimes in well in front. The biggest culprits tend to be players one and two away from the pile of bodies and the rest are simply well ahead and referees simply let it go. It’s not rush defence – it is off-sides! Perhaps its time that there should be a clear gap shown between the hindmost foot, say a metre. Should be easy for touch judges (oh, okay, assistant referees) to call but that might be expecting too much.

· Might as well deal with the ruck now. “The purpose of a ruck is to allow players to compete for the ball which is on the ground,” not my words, copied from the Law Book. The law still appears exactly as it always has in that when at least one player from each team are in contact, on their feet and over the ball which is on the ground, you have to step (drive) over the ball to gain possession AND YOU MAY NOT USE YOUR HANDS TO CLAIM IT. Yet, time and time again players, often leaning against an opponent, thus in contact, pick up the ball. Some or so good at it they’ve even given them a name – a jackler, or as some commentators would have it, a jackal. Never mind that heads follow the hands into the swirling mass of bones and boots (you know, we have to guard against head injuries) it is absolutely against the law as it still stands in the book. The solution. Let’s get back to rucking!

· Which leads to HIA – Head Injury Assessment. Make no mistake this is a serious problem that the game has to address, and is trying to, but a lot of the actions taken are ludicrous and at odds with the nature of a physically (mightily so) confrontational sport. The greatest irritant is the inconsistency of rulings (like so much else) and a lack of empathy with the dynamics of the game. Just one example is All Black captain Sam Cane being red-carded in the 2023 World Cup Final. He was coming in for a midriff tackle on an opponent (Jesse Kriel) who suddenly changed direction and dipped. In a split second their heads were at the same height and there was a (slight) clash. Jesse was okay, Sam was okay yet he was sent off for the rest of the game in an intervention that skewed what is the biggest match every four years. But in the recent Six Nations decider between France and Scotland, French hooker Peato Mauvaka saw the red mist after being accidentally clipped on the head by the boot of a player pushed over (deliberately, after the whistle) by one of his teammates and he reacted by flying at and clearly head-butting Scots scrumhalf Ben White. His punishment? A yellow card which was not upped to red. Not even a warning to the instigator Thomas Ramos. These are just two high profile cases to illustrate the point. Most every series of matches over a weekend produce any number of head clashes – most accidental and unavoidable – yet the judgements are consistently inconsistent; often horribly skewed. And you have to wonder, why has it taken World Rugby so long to introduce a declaration of indemnity that players sign up to?

· Inconsistency of refereeing and official edicts has been an exasperating problem for such a long time. Speak to any coach and they will say – all we ask (beg for) is the same outcome for the same offence.

As they say in those ads – there’s more, much more:

· There’s the forward pass in which a referee, on the run and perhaps with other bodies obscuring his view (remember he is at ground level and does not have the benefit of slow-motion reviews) has to instantly apply the laws of physics to decide whether the ball left the passer’s hand going forwards or backwards. The IRB (now World Rugby) went to some lengths to inculcate this absurdity by proving that if a player, moving at speed, passes the ball his pace is transferred to the ball and it thus travels forward. Surely it would be much simpler to rule that the catcher, again drawing that imaginary line across the field, must be behind the passer when he catches the ball? The onus is then on the receiver to make sure he does not overrun the passer and, he presto, there will be far fewer forward (or non-forward) passes to either interrupt the game or be used by the TMO’s in their sworn duty to try to find a way to have a try disallowed. Just pass the damned thing backwards!

· On that note, what about this discrepancy? At a lineout, come high wind or sleet, the thrower has to throw the ball dead straight for anything between five and 15 metres, yet the scrumhalf feeding a scrum can stand in line with his loosehead’s chest and then put the ball in crookedly; sometimes as far as under the lock’s feet? In other words, the 9 starts out off-sides and then throws the ball in crookedly while at a lineout the thrower has to lob it dead-straight. Makes perfect sense doesn’t it?

· Now comes the accidental knock-on which these days, more often than not, is deemed a deliberate knock-on and a player sent off. A tackler comes in for the tackle, his target passes and the ball hits the tackler’s hand. It’s a split of a second, reflexive, it’s not deliberate as any referee will confirm. An intentional slap down is easy to spot. One even hears referees calling out “he didn’t go for it with two hands, just one hand!” No! Often an interception is pulled off by the defender stopping the ball with one outstretched hand and then controlling it with the other. There even interceptions pulled off by a player controlling the ball with only one hand. Better for referees to err on the side of borderline as a wilful slap is easy to spot, rather than the current rationale, “the ball touched the player’s hand so it must have been deliberate.”

· Something else Doc Craven was wont to say was “the referee is the sole judge of fact.” Why? Because it’s the laws. One understands the need to get to the right decision and that modern technology can greatly assist, but the power of the TMO has become excessive, hence intrusive. The referee is often reduced a miked-up puppet scurrying around waiting for instructions from on high from an official (sometimes whole clusters of them, most less qualified than the man with the whistle) on why some key play must be undone. It often seems as though the TMOs singular purpose is to find a way for a try to be denied.

· Some of the trials that are in operation this year could have been avoided by simply applying the laws more strictly. One such is that a player who is in a ruck or a maul may not play an opponent who is near it, 1m away, normally the scrumhalf. When this adaptation was announced I was in discussion with a leading coach (himself a former scrumhalf) and described it as the Leinster/Ireland amendment because of the propensity of Leinster and Ireland to hit mauls at an angle, coming in sideways (note, not in the side) rather than square with their own goal line at their backs and parallel to the touchlines, joining or attaching to the side of the formation and then “swimming” around while showing the referee that they are bound. Then when the maul breaks up, they are immediately able to play the receiver. Instead of coming up with a way to protect the 9 why not simply instruct referees to make sure players joining rucks and mauls come in square, backs to their own goalline, rather than at 45° to get onto the side of the formation, causing a wheel or for a player who is completely off-sides to be able to go for an opponent because he had been attached. Even though I believe it was accidental this kind of binding led directly to the ill-fated knee injury suffered by Antoine Dupont as well as the sideways, twisting cleanout (refs refer to it as a “Croc Roll”) that did for Malcolm Marx. Perhaps what is needed is that when a player in a maul or ruck goes passed the median line of the formation he should immediately “get out of there” and retreat behind the offsides line.

· There’s another oddity in this vein. While administrators say they want to eliminate as much kicking (the dreaded box-kick) as possible, without seemingly thinking of doing something about off-sides, they introduce an instruction that teams (facing the kick) must provide “clear access” to the catcher. Standing your ground or turning strategically as the ball flies over is as old as the game and anyone deliberately stepping in the way of a chaser is easily spotted. Now they have to clear a path so that the catcher, already vulnerably exposed, can be “got at” by the advancing chasers. It’s almost an invitation to an injury.

· Another relatively recent trend is the out-the-back pass; a revival of the way the Brumbies in the early days of SuperRugby adapted “running interference” (a gridiron term) to block tacklers but bordering on obstruction. It is a way to counter flat-lying defences but too many times the blockers actually make contact with players coming in for the tackle and provide a screen for their teammates running with the ball.

· Obstruction? What about legalised obstruction? The driving maul, which without a doubt the Springboks and other SA sides are best at, is nothing but obstruction with many players heaving and wrestling in front of the ball and protecting the player with it. It should have been stopped years ago because it is a tenet of rugby that you can’t play in front of the ball.

There is much more that is wrong. The time it takes to set scrums and lineouts, efforts to “de-power” the scrum (which smacks of an anti-Springbok component), players objecting to or shouting at referees (only the captain may speak), referees “coaching” (calling Play! Hands off! Roll away! Release! Stay!) rather than using the whistle to run a game… I could go on.

However seeing as I am now in danger of falling into the online writer’s trap of having too much space, rather than paring down on verbosity, time to draw a line.

Suffice it to say that I have found a column in this very laptop I wrote in 2008 calling for the laws to be a re-written and another in which I quoted Jonathan Kaplan, a top referee who tried to promote a flowing game, at the time of his retirement in 2014 calling for a complete revamp of the laws.

That is what is needed. No tweaks, no experiments. World Rugby needs to assemble a panel of leading players, coaches, referees and other concerned parties to overhaul the laws into a clear-cut and more understandable form so that once again the Law Book will be a guide on how the game should be played and enable referees, who are being hung out to dry, to simply hold up the handbook and say: “I blew the Law.”

The Open, as the Royal & Ancient insists it should be called, but correctly the British Open, the staging of which gave rise to many national Open championships, including those of South Africa, America and Australia, each year reminds of the exalted performances of golfers from the country at the southern end of Africa.

South Africa, a nation with fewer golfers than some American states, has won The Open 11 times; the names of Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Nick Price (included because he played as a member of the Sunshine Tour and, in fact, was born in Durban), Ernie Els and Louis Oosthuizen etched onto the plinth of the Claret Jug, or the Golf Champion Trophy as it is inscribed, which has been presented to the Champion Golfer of the Year since 1872.

Locke’s name appears four times, Player’s thrice, Els’ twice, and Price and Oosthuizen each once.

However, much as the staging of The Open each July recalls great deeds of the past it now also carries a worrying codicil. Thanks to Ashleigh Buhai’s gritty victory in last year’s Women’s Open at Muirfield, South Africa has a recent Major winner but has not a men’s Major winner since Ernie Els at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2012.

The 11-year span between Majors since Bobby Locke won South Africa’s first at Royal St George’s in 1949 is easily the longest break between men’s Majors.

In the interim many keepers of the legacy created by Locke and Player have ascended the podium. Els’ last Open pushed his tally to four and shortly before him Louis Oosthuizen (The Open, St Andrews, 2010) and Charl Schwartzel (US Masters, Augusta, 2011) seemed destined to add to their country’s tally of Majors.

Oosthuizen (unsurprisingly dubbed King Louis) accomplished one of the most dominant performances this century by winning by seven strokes. He achieved his victory on Nelson Mandela’s 92^nd birthday (18 July) on the 150^th anniversary of the old championship always staged on linksland – as it was at the start.

Schwartzel became the first Masters champion to have birdied holes 69, 70, 71 & 72, but was not again “right in the mix” of a Major. Oosthuizen, on the other hand, often contended and, going into this year’s championship, held the unenviable record of a “Grand Slam”, of sorts, by having finished second in all four Majors. He twice lost in sudden-death play-offs – to Bubba Watson in the 2012 Masters after the American left-hander pulled off a miraculous second shot off the pine straw at the 10^th and to eventual winner Zach Johnson (Marc Leishman also made sudden-death) on his return to St Andrews in 2015.

Possessor of one of the best swings in modern golf Oosthuizen seemed the one most likely to give South African another men’s Major but when, in 2022, he and Schwartzel accepted more money than they could ever win in the remainder of their careers by joining LIV it seemed a concession that he felt his chances of again winning one of the Big Four had declined.

Branden Grace’s record and his composure under pressure marked him as a possible Major man, but he too went to LIV which, whatever spin was put on it, inevitably had a negative impact on his, and the other players’, ability to be competitive in Majors.

South Africa, thanks to excellent junior programmes in all the provinces and Golf RSA representative squads churns out a continuous array of outstanding youngsters who raise hopes that the next great “Saffer” might soon be raising in victory one of the world of golf’s four most desired pieces of silverware.

Recently Christo Lamprecht became the third South African in six years to win the (British) Amateur Championship (the third in four given the missed Covid years) after Jovan Rebula (Ernie Els’s nephew) and Aldrich Potgieter.

Names have flickered in the cosmos of golf – Brandon Stone, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Erik van Rooyen, Dylan Frittelli, Justin Harding – but none achieved the intensity of Els and Retief Goosen.

Recently there have been promising moments from Garrick Higgo, the first in a number of years to win on both the European and American tours, while Wilco Nienaber probably drew more attention for his long-hitting than was good for him.

Other recent top amateurs Casey Jarvis and Jaden Schaper are still finding their way in the pro game and “in the circles” it is said that Christiaan Maas, presently at college in the States, may be the one to watch.

South Africa’s most recent winner of a top-level tournament is Thriston Lawrence, at 78 currently South Africa’s highest ranked player on the OWGR – a number which, given the country’s previous presence on the list, is in itself a little alarming.

Lawrence won the BMW International in Germany in June, his 4^th DP World Tour title, and his resumé includes the SA Amateur in 2013 and 2014, the Lytham Trophy in England as well as being named the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year for 2022. He has flown under the media hype but could he be the one given the axiom that a player has to know how to win?

As to the contention that South Africa is the best little golf country in the world consider the facts.

Ten Southern African players have captured 28 Major championships, 16 Senior Majors, won the World Cup five times and the Dunhill Cup twice.

Golfers from the southern tip of Africa have won 129 US PGA Tour titles, 195 European Tour, now DP World Tour, titles (and five; Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Nick Price, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen have been inducted in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

South Africans have won:

11 British Opens

5 US Opens

5 US Masters

4 US PGAs

1 US Women’s PGA

1 Du Maurier Classic

1 Women’s British Open

9 – Gary Player (3 British Opens, 3 US Masters, 2 US PGA, 1 U.S. Open)

4 – Bobby Locke (4 British Opens)

4 – Ernie Els (2 US Opens, 2 British Opens)

3 – Nick Price (2 US PGAs, 1 British Open)

2 – Sally Little (1 US Women’s PGA, 1 Du Maurier Classic)

2 – Retief Goosen (2 US Opens)

1 – Trevor Immelman (1 US Masters)

1 – Louis Oosthuizen (1 British Open)

1 – Charl Schwartzel (1 US Masters)

1 – Ashleigh Buhai (1 Women’s British Open)

The timeline is:

1.    1949 British Open, Royal St George’s (Locke)

2.    1950 British Open, Royal Troon (Locke)

3.    1952 British Open, Royal Lytham & St Annes (Locke)

4.    1957 British Open, St Andrews (Locke)

5.    1959 British Open, Muirfield (Player)

6.    1961 US Masters, Augusta (Player)

7.    1962 US PGA, Aronimink GC Pennsylvania (Player)

8.    1965 US Open, Bellerive CC, St Louis (Player)

9.    1968 British Open, Carnoustie (Player)

10.                     1972 US PGA, Oakland Hills, Michigan (Player)

11.                     1974 US Masters, Augusta (Player)

12.                     1974 British Open, Royal Lytham & St Annes (Player)

13.                     1978 US Masters, Augusta (Player)

14.                     1980 LPGA, Jack Nicklaus GC, Ohio (Little)

15.                     1988 Classique Du Maurier, Vancouver GC (Little)

16.                     1992 US PGA, Bellerive CC, St Louis (Price)

17.                     1994 US Open, Oakmont CC, Pennsylvania (Els)

18.                     1994 British Open, Turnberry (Price)

19.                     1994 US PGA, Southern Hills CC, Tulsa (Price)

20.                     1997 US Open, Congressional CC, Washington DC (Els)

21.                     2001 US Open, Southern Hills CC, Tulsa (Goosen)

22.                     2002 British Open, Muirfield (Els)

23.                     2004 US Open, Shinnecock Hills, Long Island NY (Goosen)

24.                     2008 US Masters, Augusta (Immelman)

25.                     2010 British Open, St Andrews (Oosthuizen)

26.                     2011 US Masters, Augusta (Schwartzel)

27.                     2012 British Open, Royal Lytham & St Annes (Els)

28.                     2022 Women’s British Open, Muirfield (Buhai)

16 Senior Majors:

9 – Gary Player (3 Senior PGA Championships, 3 Senior British Opens, 2 US Seniors Opens, 1 Senior Players Championship).

1 each – Bobby Verwey (1991 British Senior Open), John Fourie (1992 British Senior Open), Simon Hobday (1994 US Senior Open), Denis Watson (2007 Senior US PGA), Mark McNulty (2007 The Tradition).

According to Golf RSA’s latest stats South Africa has a total of just 127 582 affiliated golfers – i.e. golfers who belong to 468 clubs. In truth the number is probably nearer 450 000 to 500 000 as many regular golfers do not join clubs.

The all-time list of Major winners is obviously dominated by Americans (3 of the Majors are played on American soil) with the Scots and the English boasting good numbers built in the formative years of, especially, The Open.

The obvious comparison with South Africa is Australia.

According to the latest list I could find (2021/2022) Golf Australia’s participation report reveals that more than 2.7-million Aussies play golf (5 times more than South Africa), with each state and territory experiencing significant club membership growth.

Sixteen Australian golfers have claimed 30 Majors. Jim Ferrier, often overlooked in the annals, was Australia’s first Major champion (he won the 1947 US PGA) and Cameron Smith, who defends the Claret Jug at Royal Liverpool this week, the most recent.

Karrie Webb, one of the greatest woman golfers ever, like Gary Player for South Africa, adds considerable weight to the Australia’s list. However the list of women’s Majors is problematic in that some events that were considered Majors are no longer and there are currently five; as opposed to the men’s four.

Webb has seven; the Du Maurier Classic (1999), the Kraft Nabisco Championship (2000, 2006), the US Women's Open (2000, 2001), the LPGA Championship (2001) and the Women's British Open(2002). Jan Stephenson (3), Minjee Lee (2) and Hannah Green (1) added six to the list.

Peter Thomson leads the Australian men’s list. Thomson is 14th on the all-time list of men's major winners, having won the Claret Jug at The Open five times in 12 years from 1954 onwards.

Other men from down under are Greg Norman (2) and David Graham (2) with Smith, Jason Day, Adam Scott, Geoff Ogilvy, Steve Elkington, Ian Baker-Finch, Wayne Grady, Kel Nagle and Jim Ferrier each having one.

So, as the record shows, South Africa is easily the best little golf country in the world… but it is time we won another.

I have an American friend who refused to drive a Japanese motorcar because of his rage over Pearl Harbor.

But now my Jewish friend drives a Mercedes Benz and my American buddy drives a Toyota.

You may ask: what does that have to with the price of a ProV1?

Firstly, in no way am I trivializing the two appalling events mentioned or disrespecting the deep hurt of those affected by them.

I am merely trying to make the point that sometimes wounds heal, anger subsides, emotions ease and the world moves on. I was amazed, for instance, at how seemingly uncaring many top American professional golfers were about the scars still felt by so many of their countrymen and women over the appalling events of 9/11.

However approving or disapproving diminishes and reality takes over. For whatever reason, you get on with it.

That seems to be the outcome of the shock decision of the (U.S.) PGA Tour to seek rapprochement with the hostile LIV tour and its backers, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Although American law-makers, alarmed at the possible takeover of an American institution by a (hostile?) foreign country, may yet have the final say, for now the merger/alliance/accord (no-one seems to know) remains in place.

If it continues thus is it not time for the reluctant partners to take a wider view. Let’s face it the Saudis, as suppliers fuel to many countries and sponsors, nay, owners, of numerous entities in sport, have infiltrated, to a large extent, most countries where golf is played.

Instead of making this an American problem the PGA Tour having approved of, and accepted, that it is okay to take Saudi money has the chance to restructure the shape of golf and create the “World Tour” that Greg Norman, yes him, was always so keen on and which seems to have percolated in his mind ever since, he believes, former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem stole the concept from him.

The Saudi PIF already sponsors many events on the DP World Tour (which, if media reports are to be believed, is pretty much controlled by the PGA Tour), the LPGA, the LET Tour and the Asian Tour, some even under its own banner, which tends to rule out objections to their involvement.

So here’s my idea. Why not try to create a “World Tour” by creating a series of Super Opens which will bring the top players together to compete for the greatest and most significant championships in the world.

The four Majors, to my mind, are sacrosanct but the fact that The Open (British Open for Americans) and the U.S. Open are among them supports my contention that there might be a global solution to the Golf War.

The South African Open is either the second or the third oldest open championship in the world, along with the U.S. Open (its difficult to conclusively resolve the dispute over which of them actually came after The Open) and is the blue riband event in one of the oldest golf circuits, The Sunshine Tour.

The Australian Open also has provenance as a significant world title as do championships such as the French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swiss Opens.

Golf has boomed in the Far East, creating platforms for players to rise to prominence and the establishment of top events. One could therefore elevate tournaments such as a Korea Open, Japan Open, Hong Kong Open, perhaps others, to embrace tours and golf communities currently on the outer.

The Majors and the identified national Opens could then be interlinked into a world-wide series which would, to borrow an old idea of the PGA Tour, “follow the sun.”

These designated events could even culminate in a “World Open” which the underwriters, the Saudis, would probably want staged in their country.

At the same time I would engage and include women’s professional golf to stage world-wide tournaments to run concurrently, and sometimes alongside, the men’s events – thus recognising that women’s golf is burgeoning and to many has become a more attractive telegenic product than the men’s game.

Encompassing all the tours would fit well with the “growing the game” mantra so often espoused by both groups currently at an uneasy peace – those on the PGA and DP Tours still unsure of what to make of it and feeling betrayed and some from LIV keeping up a self-righteous tirade and seemingly determined to continue with their hybrid carnivals.

The thought of including all tours, especially as the International Federation of PGA Tours already exists, occurred to me when it became apparent that LIV was not going to back off.

It was said Greg Norman was not part of it and had been closed out, but he’s steaming on. Norman’s standing in Australia means that country is ripe for the picking and unless the PGA Tour and their acolytes, the DP World Tour, move to install a firewall and protect their partners others may also be seduced by the desert dollars.

There are many arguments against and I empathise with them all, worried as I am about whether I am not myself a hypocrite, but as Phineas Taylor Barnum, the American author, publisher, philanthropist, politician and co-founder of the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus said: “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.”

Instead of the Saudi oil dollars going to an avaricious few let the global game of golf share in the bounty.

*Dan Retief is the author of “The Sunshine Boys” – an history of The Sunshine Tour.

The world of golf is still spinning faster than an old balata ball following the shock announcement that the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour had struck a deal with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. (PIF)

No-one saw it coming and no-one, even a week later, seems to know what is contained in the agreement. It was put across variously as the two major tours merging/joining/cooperating/remaining separate entities with LIV Golf with no clarity as to how it would all work. Conflicting claims were championed by both sides.

However there is a massive flaw in the kerfuffle – the PGA Tour is behaving as though golf belongs to America. As reporters from all parts of the media sift through details and new revelations the Golf War has taken on aspects of a geopolitical negotiation – America, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the middle east.

At the moment only one thing is certain. But for a tiny cabal who secretly conspired to put together the agreement most were completely blindsided. Greg Norman, the predatorial face of and launcher of LIV was (seemingly) not in the know and neither were Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, the duo who notionally led the players on the PGA Tour.

There is little doubt that the players, McIlroy in particular as he had become the de facto voice of the PGA Tour and bore the brunt of LIV’s continuous barbs, were betrayed by the pair of commissioners Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley; the latter very much a bit player given the tone of the statement.

Monahan was immediately and correctly labelled a hypocrite because of his previous bellicose stance against LIV and the fact that he had used the emotional wounds of 9/11 to berate players who crossed to LIV.

The Press Release announcing the amalgamation was seemingly clear enough but it raised more questions than answers: “The parties have signed an agreement that combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.”

What was and remains astonishing is that such a small group could make such a momentous decision without consulting their constituency – the players. At the very least a decision to completely alter the way professional golf is run should have been put to the vote.

In getting into bed with the Saudis, Monahan and Pelley have done exactly what they held against the players who went to LIV – they have broken a contract.

What is becoming clearer is that the reason for such a volte face is MONEY – the infinite amounts of it PIF, represented by the kingdom’s “Face of Sport” Yasir Al-Rumayyan, are said to have as against the dwindling coffers of the PGA Tour.

After Phil Mickelson had first railed against the PGA Tour, basically accusing it of making far too much money off the backs of the players while not being exactly open with where the funds were going, and LIV came into being the Tour came up with a series of odd inducements to pacify the players who stayed loyal.

The most dumbfounding of these was the so-called PIP – or Player Impact Program (American spelling) in which players were rewarded not for their skill at wielding golf clubs but for their standing on various media platforms; including social media.

It might well have been called the TIP (Tiger Impact Program) because, let’s face it, there was only ever going to be one golfer at the top of the list.

The PIP was labelled a thinly-veiled attempt to appease the top players who had not taken the Desert Dollars and, if truth be told, if visibility in the media was to be yardstick Paige Spiranac probably has more “cleaverage” that even Tiger has leverage.

The PGA Tour also instituted so-called elevated tournaments – basically events with substantially increased prizemoney – aimed at pacifying the top players who had remained loyal – but in effect creating a “Royal family” of the privileged separate from the rank-and-file – but also tying them in.

What it did show however was that the PGA Tour had more money than it was letting on (and that perhaps Mickelson, portrayed as a greedy, unprincipled money grubber, had been right) but not nearly enough to keep pace with the oil dollars gushing out of Saudi wells.

The two Tours seemed to have right on their side; after all the players who opted for mammon, masquerading as LIV, had broken their contracts. There was a pyrrhic victory when American courts ruled that the Saudis would be subject to reveal all in antitrust lawsuit discoveries.

But it also meant that the PGA Tour would have to open their books and that – perhaps being found to not pay over as much to charity as historically claimed and huge salaries for the commissioner and some staff – plus astronomically rising legal bills is in all likelihood what caused Monahan et al to seek a settlement; such as it is.

From the start I was, and am, no fan of LIV. Greg Norman’s egotistical and hostile approach was off-putting and, I felt, unnecessary and LIV seemed to attract a pack of the game’s most loutish players; obviously in my opinion.

I was affronted by the clearly untruthful utterances of some who crossed over and how quickly they changed the reasons they had given.

Being a traditionalist, I did not enjoy their 54-hole fairground format and found some of the team stuff infantile. “Golf but Louder” just did not resonate with me.

LIV’s anonymous (always a turnoff) Tweets were consistently mean and nasty – often aimed at Rory McIlroy – and this boorishness has continued unabated even after peace was meant to have been achieved.

American media personalities, notably Alan Shipnuck (author of a controversial biography on Mickelson), Eamon Lynch and Brandel Chamblee, did not mince their words in condemning LIV and those who crossed the Red Sea, mostly trying to shame them because of the Saudi’s alleged support for the 9/11 bombers and the horrific murder of journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in Istanbul.

But they never replied (albeit to questions posed on Twitter) to the fact that some of America’s top companies, household names, do big business with the Saudis, that much of the country’s fuel comes from there and that Saudi money pretty much underpins the LPGA, the LET and is all over the DP World Tour – itself an aberration as what was once the European Tour now carries the name of an Emirati multinational logistics company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

I was mindful that I too was complicit in what is now called ‘sportswashing’ – travelling many times to cover the Million Dollar Golf Challenge (subsequently the Nedbank Challenge) to see Nicklaus, Trevino, Miller, Ballesteros, Floyd,  Stadler and celebrities such as Sean Connery, Joe di Maggio, Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine and Glen Campbell (in fact I played a round of golf with the latter) when it was staged in the scam independent state created by the Nationalist Apartheid government.

The “deal” may yet be scuppered by America’s anti-competitive laws but Messrs Monahan, Pelley, Al-Rumayyan, Ed Herlihy (PGA Tour board chairman) and Jimmy Dunne (board member), the latter having also done a 180 turnaround on his previous anti-LIV statements, cannot proceed as though this is an American problem without considering the impact on the Sunshine Tour, the Australasian Tour, the Asian Tour, the Japan Tour, the Canadian Tour and the Tour de las Americas (Central America). All of them are interlinked and no thought seems to have been given to that. What of the women’s tours that are rapidly becoming a better product than the men?

In fact I would not be surprised if even now the predatory Great White Shark, who maintains LIV will go on, is circling these guppies with the aim of herding them into a Rest of the World Tour.

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