First velvet, then violence: the contradiction of Siya Kolisi

“It’s about the stuff you don’t need talent for, the stuff people don’t see.” – Siya Kolisi

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

THE irrisistable reality of Siya Kolisi’s right fist met the immovable possibilities offered by his left palm with a solid, satisfying slap at a press conference in London on Friday, effectively punctuating an innocuous utterance.

“We’re looking for a hard battle up front,” Kolisi had said, but the sound his hands made as they collided with each other and the last word of that sentence said it so much more emphatically.

The telling difference between words and action captured the essence of the flank who will lead the Springboks against England at Twickenham on Saturday in the first — and most important — match of their end-of-year-tour: preach with velvet, play with violence.

But there’s plenty of scope for subtlety and thinking between those extremes.

“The thing we measure ourselves on is effort,” Kolisi said. “We don’t look at talent and what you can do.

“[It’s about] how much you can do for the team — the stuff you don’t need talent for, the stuff people don’t see.

“We measure that, and it’s getting better and better every week.”

There didn’t seem to be much in the way of subtlety and thinking going on in much of the rest of the room.

Question: “Did you know much about those guys [England’s loose trio of Brad Shields, Tom Curry and Mark Wilson] when you saw their names on the team sheet?”

Kolisi: “Obviously I watch rugby. You get to know the people you’re playing against.”

That triggered a curious interest in the fact that a rugby player should watch rugby. Because he wants to, or because he has to?

“I watch because I enjoy watching rugby,” Kolisi said, puzzlement creeping across his otherwise smooth face.

“There was rugby on TV and I was having a braai and enjoying watching the game.”

Like, duh, he didn’t say.

So it probably didn’t help when, in answer to a question about what he knew about Twickenham, where has hasn’t played before, from having watched matches beamed from there, he said, “When I was younger I didn’t watch rugby: I didn’t have a TV.”

Happily, Kolisi doesn’t have to explain the how and why of what he does to other rugby players — including opponents like England, some of whom he formed friendships with on their tour to South Africa in June. 

“That’s the most amazing thing about rugby,” he said. “We bash each other up for 80 minutes and afterwards we chat and get to know each other better.

“We had a couple of sing-songs afterwards; they started singing Shosholoza.”

Kolisi’s team for Saturday’s match is an experimental combination because several stalwarts are unavailable for selection as the game falls outside of the agreed international window.

Many eyes will be on Ivan van Zyl at scrumhalf, where Faf de Klerk would ordinarily be, and Damian Willemse at fullback, the domain of Willie le Roux.

Van Zyl is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of halfback: dependable but not dazzling.

Not so Willemse, a dazzler delux. But one who is better known as a flyhalf and, at 20, has played only three Tests.

On Saturday, he will be the starting fullback in a Test for the first time. Cause for concern?

“He’s young but he’s very confident,” Kolisi said. “I don’t really worry about him because he’s very mature — the way he looks at clips and studies the game, and he also watches himself at training, that gives me so much confidence in him.”

Ah, but does he watch rugby? And can he sing Shosholoza?

Rassie makes a plan: at scrumhalf, at fullback, in the pack …

“We’re in the process of evolving from just being a grunting, bulking, running-over-you team.” – Rassie Erasmus

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

SCRUMHALF is a necessary evil of rugby, a position that needs to be filled for the damn straight but unloved reason that somebody has to shovel the ball from the forwards to the backs.

And then Faf de Klerk arrives to spear tackle that notion into touch with some of the most creative, rivetting play yet seen from someone in a No. 9 jersey.

Thing is, De Klerk is among the star players who won’t run out for the Springboks against England at Twickenham on Saturday.

Some of the others are fullback Willie le Roux, wing Cheslin Kolbe and loose forward Francois Louw.

They are all in rude health. But, even more rudely, they are unavailable because the match is outside World Rugby’s window for Tests.

So a boer had to make a plan, and despite that fact that scrumhalf Embrose Papier has been on the bench for the Boks’ last two games, the earth will not move for him on Saturday — he is again among the replacements.

Instead, Ivan van Zyl has cracked the nod. Why?

“It’s an obvious question that a lot of people will ask,” the boer who had to make that plan, Bok coach Rassie Erasmus, said on Thursday after announcing his team.

“I just think that [with] conditions and the tactical way England play, Ivan is maybe a better fit to start.

“Embrose is a more instinctive player, which is great on hard grounds.

“I think he’ll definitely have an impact on this game, [but] in these conditions and the tactical way we want to play against England, Ivan is a better choice.”

Did Van Zyl, who has played three Tests, all this year, but is more conservative — limited, even — than his peers have the varying skills to cope with the challenge?

“In my experience of these conditions you don’t need a lot of versatility,” Erasmus said, a backhanded compliment if ever there was one.

“You have to be very smart tactically, and you have to control things sometimes with the boot depending what the weather does.”   

Thunder grumbled over London on Thursday and intermediate showers throughout the day added grimness to the greyness of the skies.

But Saturday, the forecast says, should by dry and partly cloudy. 

Whatever the weather, it will be a Red Letter day for Damian Willemse, who will start at fullback for the first time.

“We’ve always had Willie le Roux available, and that’s a luxury,” Erasmus said.

“Luckily Damian has been with us for most of the Test matches and he’s very comfortable in the set-up.

“You have to start a Test match somewhere and I don’t think it gets much bigger than Twickenham against England.”

Then there’s what Erasmus described as, “Jislaaik — there’s four locks!”

But one of them, Pieter-Steph du Toit will spend “probably about 40” minutes in the tight five before being moved to flank.

That’s Erasmus’ plan to ease back into the fray all 2.05 metres of Lood de Jager, who has been out with torn pectoral since May 12 and has been named on the bench.

Still another part of the blueprint was the bigger work in progress, as Erasmus explained: “We’re in the process of evolving from just being a grunting, bulking, running-over-you team.”

The XV shows seven changes from the side that started South Africa’s last match, against New Zealand at Loftus Versveld on October 6. Did all the unnecessary tinkering irk Erasmus? 

“When we accepted the Test match we knew what the rules were,” he said. “It can’t annoy us after we’ve accepted the Test.”

At least the missing players will come back to the fold for the remaining games of a tour, against France, Scotland and Wales, that ends on November 24.

Eddie Jones and England have bigger problems, what with their ranks decimated by injury.

Consequently their loose trio have only 10 caps between them, and their props have started just four Tests.

So, amid all that uncertainty, is Jones being silly to chuck Dylan Hartley and Owen Farrell into that mix as, of all things, co-captains?

Erasmus saw that one coming: “To comment on what other coaches do is sometimes the wrongest thing you can do.

“It’s different cultures and different ways of doing things. He’s a smart coach.

“He’s beaten the Springboks with a Japanese team [34-32 at the 2015 World Cup], so I shouldn’t sit here and comment on anything he’s doing.”

Besides, Erasmus quipped, people could look at his team and say, “between your 9 and 15 you’ve got two or three caps”.

Make that 122, in fact, Rassie. Jones won’t be the only smart man at Twickenham on Saturday.

South Africa (name, province, Test caps, Test points):

15. Damian Willemse (Western Province, 3, 0)

14. Sbu Nkosi (Sharks, 3, 10 – 2t)

13. Jesse Kriel (Blue Bulls, 36, 50 – 10t)

12. Damian de Allende (Western Province, 33, 20 – 4t)

11. Aphiwe Dyantyi (Golden Lions, 9, 30 – 6t)

10. Handré Pollard (Blue Bulls, 35, 293 – 3t, 55c, 53p, 3d)

9. Ivan van Zyl (Blue Bulls, 3, 0)

8. Warren Whiteley (Golden Lions , 21, 15 – 3t)

7. Duane Vermeulen (Spears, Japan, 42, 15 – 3t)

6. Siya Kolisi (captain, Western Province, 37, 25 – 5t)

5. Pieter-Steph du Toit (Western Province, 42, 20 – 4t)

4. Eben Etzebeth (Western Province, 73, 15 – 3t)

3. Frans Malherbe (Western Province, 25, 0)

2. Malcolm Marx (Golden Lions, 20, 20 – 4t)

1. Steven Kitshoff (Western Province, 33, 5 – 1t)

Replacements:

16. Bongi Mbonambi (Western Province, 10 – 2t)

17. Thomas du Toit (Sharks, 5, 0)

18. Wilco Louw (Western Province, 11, 0)

19. RG Snyman (Blue Bulls, 8, 0)

20. Lood de Jager (Blue Bulls, 36, 20 – 4t)

21. Embrose Papier (Blue Bulls, 4, 0)

22. Elton Jantjies (Golden Lions, 29, 223 – 2t, 42c, 43p)

23. André Esterhuizen (Sharks, 5, 0)

Time to face the painful truth: sport is bad for you

We think sport stars have the best bodies. But they are rarely free of pain and they age faster because they wear out exponentially more quickly.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in Florence

HOW many 20-year-olds do you know who have to put their lives on hold for six weeks because of a knee injury? Or 23-year-olds who live for months with a spinal stress problem? Or 25-year-olds who have a shoulder wrenched out of shape?

The subjects of these calamities are not soldiers, bar brawlers or victims of domestic abuse. They are instead Damian Willemse, Kagiso Rabada and Mohamed Salah — stars of rugby, cricket and football, and apparently fine physical specimens of the human race.

Except that they’re not. They’re crocked. And they are far from the only people impaired, often permanently, by what they do for a living.

We think sport stars have the best bodies out there. Closer to the truth is that they are rarely free of pain, and that they age faster than we do because they wear themselves out exponentially more quickly.

Dale Steyn’s painful relationship with his right shoulder and left heel for more than two years now proves what doesn’t need proving: sport is bad for you, particularly if you play at the top level.

Stories about injuries are the bane of a sportswriter’s life; right up there with reporting on positive drug tests and trying to make players sound interesting when they say utterly forgettable things, which for almost all of them is almost all of the time.

But they’re paid to play. Not talk. Thing is, it can seem as if they are paid to learn the Latin names of those parts of their bodies that have been wrecked in the cause of trying to win.

The exceptionally articulate Steyn is a case in point, what with words like infraspinatus and coracoid tripping off his tongue as readily as bouncer and yorker.

You probably know your yorkers from your bouncers, but did you know the infraspinatus is, according to the medical books, “a thick triangular muscle”, “one of the four muscles of the rotator cuff” and that its major function is to “externally rotate the humerus [the bone that connects shoulder to elbow] and stabilise the shoulder joint”?

Or that the coracoid is “a small hook-like structure on the lateral edge of the superior anterior portion of the scapula [shoulder blade]” so-named because its name translates into “like a raven’s beak” in Greek, and that fracturing it is impressively difficult and unusual?

Steyn knows all that, and much more. Too much for a man of 34. In fast bowler’s years that’s about 68.

Unlike most players Steyn has spoken candidly of his frustration at the healing and rehabilitation process, and of his worry about hurting something else while he works to resolve the original problem.

“I go for a run up the mountain and I could get a hamstring injury,” he said in October, when he was emerging from his second major shoulder injury.

“Or I finally get over all of this and I go and roll my ankle getting out of the car.”

Close but not quite: less than three months later a freshly repaired Steyn tore a ligament off his left heel by stepping awkwardly into a foothole while bowling against India in the Newlands Test.   

Square one, here we go again …

More often heard than Steyn’s honesty is the kind of view expressed by boxer Ronda Rousey: “I’ve separated my shoulder and my collarbone; I’ve messed up my knee a million times. I’ve broken my foot in several places. I’ve broken my toe a bunch, broken my nose a couple of times, and had a bunch of other annoying little injuries, like turf toe [spraining the ligaments of the big toe] and arthritis and tendonitis. It’s part of the game.”

If self-harm was a crime you’d have a hard time getting that argument past a judge, and if you think that’s a reach consider that in December 2016 the US Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from former National Football League (NFL) players against a total settlement amount of US$1-billion the NFL offered previously concussed players to shut up and go away and take their brain damage with them.

A billion dollars sounds decent, but in March the players and the families of those who have died — some of diseases and conditions doctors have blamed on playing gridiron football — went back to court to file charges of fraud against the NFL for allegedly trying to delay payments, sometimes aggressively.

A month later the NFL lawyered up to argue that a special investigator be appointed to stop “widespread fraud from infecting” the settlement plan.

“Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble,” Benjamin Franklin said, and that’s happens almost without fail.

We record and remember players’ performances at length and in detail. But their injuries, the effects of which may linger long after they have graced the arena and entertained us royally, are invariably footnotes in their biographies.

It’s time we saw players for what they are: human before anything else, injuries and all, and deserving of more consideration on that score.

The other score? By comparison it matters nought.