Use it or lose it: we won’t have this moment again

Celebrate, the beloved country. You’ve earned the right to feel better than you have since Thabo Mbeki fell off the bus. But don’t waste this triumph.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

ONLY once has the points margin in a rugby World Cup final loomed larger than it did in Yokohama on Saturday.

But never before have a team won the World Cup after losing a pool game.

Never have the Springboks scored more points in a final.

Never have they lost a final, a distinction only they enjoy among the five finalists.

Never had they scored a try in a final.

Never, still, has a try been scored against them in a final.

Never have a team won more World Cups.

Never have a side won the southern hemisphere championship and the World Cup in the same year.

Never have …

Bugger all that. 

Nevermind the objective facts of the matter.

Never have a team looked more determined to win than Siya Kolisi’s unstoppable band of blood brothers.

Never have their opponents looked more devastated at that determination than England.

Never did anyone, least of all England, imagine the previously dour, methodical, predictable, defensive South Africans would throw it all in the air like they just didn’t care and play the kind of joyous rugby they did when they were barefoot and 10 years old with no-one watching.

Never, from the opening confrontation until the final gong, was the result in even a smidgen of doubt.

Never have more happy, happy, happy tears been shed by South Africans in the cause of mere sport.

Never did South Africans expect to see so many of those tears flowing from the hard, unflinching, shard-shaped eyes of Daniel Johannes Vermeulen.

Duane Vermeulen, the Boks’ matchwinning No. 8, stood there — the sweat he had won from the contest shining like a medal on the vast slab of his forehead gleaming some 1.93 metres in the sky, his mighty arms attached to meaty hands now clasped behind a massive, hairy, bearded head — and sobbed. Openly and proudly and fok julle almal.

Vermeulen’s tears disappeared into his muddied, bloodied jersey. And into the hearts of all who shared his passion, where they will stay forever.

You could tell this story just as well in short, sharp exclamations as in long and winding sentences: 32-bloody-12! Two tries to none! A scrum that was an irrisistable force and an immovable object all in one! Makazole Mapimpi’s bulletproof confidence! Cheslin Kolbe’s otherworldly brilliance! Handré Pollard’s pulseless precision! Kolisi’s serene selflessness! Rassie Erasmus’ sangoma sensibilities! Jérôme Garcès hitherto unseen competence!

But why wouldn’t you want to linger on this triumph as long as you could, and then a little longer? Celebrate, the beloved country. You’ve earned the right to feel better than you have since Thabo Mbeki fell off the bus, and you’ve earned it the hard way.

You can’t eat the World Cup or live in it or wear it or have it pay you a living wage.

Winning it won’t bring back the people we murder every few years because they have come from somewhere else in Africa, nor resurrect the women we murder every day for daring to think how they live their lives shouldn’t be controlled by men, nor stop us from preying on children for reasons too sick to get into.

Rugby won’t rid us of the wilfully, brazenly useless government we elected — yes, that’s our fault — nor spare us a shamelessly illiberal opposition that stands for nothing except whatever it is the government is against — thanks, the middle class, for nothing — nor stop the only vaguelly left-wing party from becoming an ever unfunnier joke — it’s hard to laugh at seething hate.

The World Cup won’t make Eskom do their jobs, nor will it convince the people we need to convince of the bleeding obvious — that we need a better plan for making sure we have enough water than simply praying for rain.

The privileged will still be privileged. The poor will still be poor. The zombie that is apartheid, dead only for the time it takes people to bother to vote, the rest of the time rudely alive in every real sense, will still be out there. 

For all that, what happened in Yokohama on Saturday could change things. It kindles a small flame of hope that, just maybe, South Africa isn’t doomed to be remembered as the country that betrayed itself.

What chance this will make the homed see the homeless as the fellow human beings they are and not, as too many of them do currently, as filth to be swept into someone else’s streets?

Or that those who have too much will understand why they are despised, and do something about it?

Or that the powerful will become accountable to those who lend them — not give them — that power?

Like we said, that flame of hope is small. But, for now, it lives.

In 1995, when we lived in some kind of Disney movie, and in 2007, when we still thought everything would be OK, winning the World Cup wasn’t what it is now.

It’s already a cliché that the champions of 2019 are significantly more black than their predecessors, that they look a lot more like the nation the marketing people say they represent.

Fair enough. But we’re in real trouble if we still need to make the point that South Africa does not have a future if that future is not, mostly, black. Let’s hear all those arguments against affirmative action selection now. And let’s see if anyone has the balls to admit that quotas work, that without them what happened in Yokohama on Saturday would never have happened, that all Kolisi needed to be what he is was the genuine opportunity to be it.

Moments like this don’t come often. For some, they don’t come at all.

You must be blessed indeed, Mzansi, for this is your third chance to get this right.

Never, surely, will you have it again.

This time, don’t waste it.

First published by Times SELECT.

Boks light the path for SA’s other teams

“They’ve showed us how. They were fearless and they played with a lot of passion and organisation. We need to do the same thing.” – Lungi Ngidi learns from the Springboks’ World Cup triumph

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IT will come as no shock to learn that Temba Bavuma looks up to Siya Kolisi.

Standing only 1.62 metres of grit, skill and talent tall, Bavuma has to tilt his gaze upward to catch the eye of most other figures in elite sport.

But it’s Kolisi who has caught Bavuma’s eye with his inspirational leadership of the Springboks to rugby’s pinnacle — and, perchance, to a way to turn South Africa’s troubled past and present into a better, brighter future.

“I don’t think he really understands the magnitude of what the guys have done,” Bavuma said after Kolisi captained his team to a 32-12 triumph over England in the men’s World Cup final in Yokohama on Saturday.

“As a country we’ve gone through tough times, not just on the sporting field but off the field as well. Their efforts have united everyone.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of us forgetting about all our problems, but it’s given us an escape and a drug for us to remember what this country is all about.”

Kolisi, who rose out of abject poverty, is central to that hope. 

“If you look at Siya and his background and where he’s come from it really gives testimony to the belief that anything is possible if you really believe in it,” Bavuma said.

“As an international sportsman myself I look up to the guy, and the guys around him.

“What they’ve done is something we as the Proteas envision ourselves doing and strive towards doing. They’ve strengthened our belief in doing it.”

As sweet as the invariably thoughtful Bavuma’s words were, there was a sting in their tail.

He wasn’t part of the South Africa squad that lost five of their eight completed games at this year’s cricket World Cup in England, but he would have shared their pain nonetheless.

Not that he isn’t used to feeling it. Bavuma was born in 1990, two years before South Africa went to the World Cup for the first time.

Kepler Wessels’ side surprised all by making the semi-finals, but that’s as good as it has got for a team who have made an unhappy habit of failing to fire in tournaments.

In seven trips to the World Cup they have yet to reach a final.

In their seven World Cups the Boks have made the final three times — and won all of them.

Rugby and cricket are vastly different games, but the cricketers are hopeful some of the Boks’ magic rubs off.

“They’ve proved they can do it on the big stage, so we’ll take a lot from that,” Kagiso Rabada said.

“They’ve showed us how. They were fearless and they played with a lot of passion and organisation. We need to do the same thing.”

Lungi Ngidi, too, had his nose pressed against the sweetshop window: “Having experienced a World Cup earlier this year with disappointment, to see our country do well is amazing.

“That’s the perfect blueprint. These guys have shown us how to do it.

“All that’s left for us to do is also to pull our weight as the South African cricket team.”

So South Africa’s cricketers aren’t deluding themselves that they don’t have a way to go before they can challenge for the one-day format’s highest honour.

But football in our country exists in a bubble of unreality kept intact by the fact that the top tier of the game is the richest league in sub-Saharan Africa and behind only Egypt and Morocco in continental terms.

Closer to the truth are the FIFA rankings, which suggest that a dozen African national teams are better than Bafana Bafana.

That said, we need to apply perspective to the comparison. FIFA lists 209 countries in its men’s rankings — South Africa are 72nd overall — while World Rugby has 105 competing sides and the International Council, in ODI terms, just 20.

It’s a crude measure, but it is thus almost twice as difficult to win the World Cup playing football than rugby, and more than 10 times harder than it is for cricket teams.

For Bafana to go all the way is the tallest of orders facing all of South Africa’s teams.

But Bavuma can take heart that, with less thinking and more doing, the Proteas could climb up to the Boks’ level.

At 1.88 metres Kolisi is 26 centimetres taller than the pocket rocket in pads — a significant difference, but not enough to stop Zwide’s finest son from looking Bavuma in the eye to tell him he can do it, too.

First published by TMG Digital.

Are we the champions, my friends?

Which Queen song will South African sport remember best from 2019?

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

AND the 2019 African Cup of Nations champions will be … Who cares what the coalition of the always willing, ever ready, mostly able here at Times Select think. Here’s what’s come down from on high in the past few days, apparently.

“God revealed to me that Black Stars would win the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in June.”

That’s Reindolph Oduro Gyebi, the “General Overseer” of God’s Crown Chapel in Kumasi in Ghana, “Eagle Prophet” to his flock, laying on the fire and brimstone on Adom FM. Of course, there was more …

“I saw rainbow clouding over the Black Stars. I also saw captain Asamoah Gyan and his deputy, Andre Ayew, holding the AFCON trophy and presenting it.”

Gyebi isn’t new to the kopsmokkeling business, having — so he says — foretold disasters, disease and death.

Among his pending predictions are that Nana Akufo-Addo, who became Ghana’s president in January 2017, will serve one term only. In May last year he was adamant Ghana will be rich in two years’ time.

Don’t watch this space. Watch the God’s Crown Chapel Facebook page instead.

In Gyebi’s latest foray into the future he didn’t explain how Gyan and Ayew could help their team win the trophy and then present it to themselves.

Neither did the prophet (peas be upon him) hazard a divined guess at where the tournament will be played since Cameroon have been dumped as the original hosts. The truth got there before he did: Egypt.

Bafana Bafana haven’t lost any of their five AFCON qualifiers but they’ve won only two. Much hangs on their last qualifier, against Libya on March 21. When the teams met at Moses Mabhida in September, it ended goalless. So it’s off to north Africa for the South Africans, who need just a point to make it to the finals.

Sounds doable, but they’re going to a country that put up a merciless dictator for almost 41 years before assassinating him and dragging his corpse through the streets for all to see. They don’t take kak.

So Bafana might have been quietly hopeful that the event did come to their backyard if only to gaurantee their participation.

Happy New Year, sportslovers. So far, so weird. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that 2019 will be big for Mzansi’s big three.

And for football in particular, what with Banyana Banyana’s first trip to the World Cup also on the programme. Desiree Ellis’ squad are pooled with No. 2-ranked Germany, Spain, who are 12th, and, in 15th place, China. South Africa? A distant 48th.

But they have a decent chance of reaching a knockout stage that will feature the four best third-placed sides from the six groups along with the group winners and runners-up.

Getting to the sudden death rounds hasn’t been a problem for South Africa on the cricket field. Not so staying alive when losing means going home.

So you might not want to know this considering what has happened too many times before, but it’s time for another edition of the World Cup. It’s in England, where South Africa suffered their most inglorious exit yet from the tournament at Edgbaston in 1999.

Allan Donald was too shellshocked to run, Lance Klusener was too shellshocked to turn around, the thoroughly shellshocked South Africans shambled for the losers’ exit wondering what the hell had happened, and unshockable Australia marched on from that tied semi-final towards another title.

Might things go differently this year? Probably: there’s not a lot of confidence in South Africa to get anywhere near the semi-finals and that should help keep the pressure off. Also, no team in the world are better led than Faf du Plessis’ side. If he can’t get them over the line no-one can.

Rugby, too, will stage a World Cup this year — in Japan, whose 34-32 win over the Springboks in Brighton at the 2015 event is unarguably the most famous victory, and defeat, in the game’s history.

The Boks spent much of last year playing as if they were trying to convince themselves, and us, that their 1995 and 2007 incarnations did not win the Webb Ellis Cup when we know they did. There was little thunder among the forwards, even less lightning among the backs, and a paucity of ideas all round.

For two-time world champions to win only half their 14 matches in 2018 does not bode well for their chances of adding a third title mere months from now. 

Part of the problem is that Siya Kolisi is too nice. Cricket teams can be captained by committee but not rugby sides, which, like newspapers, have to be dictatorships if they are to win anything worth winning. Perhaps that why Gaddafi banned the game in Libya. He decided it was too violent, on the say-so of one of his sons. We kid you not. Maybe he was nervous of competition.

So rather than trying to bring spread the love liberally in his team by refusing to take credit for successes, Kolisi needs to harden the hell up and lead from the front and not the huddle. He should channel his inner Idi Amin — a 1.93-metre lock forward of decent ability before he turned to killing people for sport — and not wonder what Gandhi would do.      

What might you think, then, of South Africans waking up in a wonderland at around 1pm on Saturday, November 2?

That they must’ve had a hell of a Friday night if they’re stirring only then. Fair enough. But 1pm (SA time) on Saturday, November 2 2019 is more or less when rugby’s World Cup final should end.

And there they are, the Boks, kings of the game for the third time. If Kolisi smiles any wider the top half of his head will fall off.

Cut to the stands, where the gathered Proteas, still pinching themselves about becoming World Cup champions, are dispensing their adulation. So, too, are Banyana Banyana, their tracksuits aglint forever with the star above the badge they earned for triumphing at the World Cup. Also on their feet and cheering are Bafana Bafana, their joy for not only qualifying for the AFCON finals but going to Egypt and winning the damn thing refusing to fade.

Queen’s “We are the champions” is booming around International Stadium Yokohama, just as it did above the celebrating South Africans after the AFCON final in June, at Stade de Lyon on July 7, and at Lord’s on July 19.

It is, of course, way too much to ask. No country in the history of international sport has, nor in all likelihood will, know this feeling.

No-one would write this script because no-one would buy it. Unless, perhaps, it included a thoroughly New South Africa tangent about which came first: the sheep or the beach.

South Africa win all four of the major trophies on offer to their teams in 2019? Nah. Never going to happen. 

If we seriously think so it’s time to reach for the lyrics of another Queen song:

“Is this the real life?

“Is this just fantasy?

“Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality …”

Hang on. Before we put this to bed someone had better give “Prophet Eagle” a call.

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?

Siya later, Dyantyi might have told English press

“It’s going to be a very tasty contest up front.” – Aphiwe Dyantyi

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

“SIYA …” came the beginning of a question from an English reporter at the Springboks’ press conference on Thursday.

It grew into an enquiry centered on the “huge physical encounters between England and South Africa in the past”.

Fair enough. Except that Bok flank and captain Siya Kolisi wasn’t in the room. Instead, winger Aphiwe Dyantyi was behind the microphones.

Dyantyi, the epitome of politeness when he had sat down with a chirpy, “Hello everybody”, now surveyed his, at best, ignorant inquisitor with something like irritation.

His arms were crossed, his chin snug with his Adam’s apple, his forehead jagging low and forward, his eyebrows arched, and his eyes beaming steady and smoking.

If he had bad manners, he might have said, “See ya later”, rose and left.

If he had a snarky sense of humour, he could have said, “Siya later.”

As in, at Friday’s captain’s presser.

Instead, Dyanthi said, “You talking to me?”

Indeed, the reporter was.

“It’s two great packs of forwards,” Dyantyi said, deadpan.

“It’s going to be a very tasty contest up front.”

Seated to Dyantyi’s right, Warren Whiteley smiled through his quizzical frown, and turned his head towards his teammate: “Tasty?”

Dyantyi, still deadpan, still staring straight ahead, continued: “Ja, it’s going to be a tasty one.”

Whiteley couldn’t help bursting the bubble, melting into a snigger with: “You’re going to be on the wing, though …”

Eish, these South Africans. They all look the same to some people, né.

Whiteley also fielded a question from the dark side of the moon: “Did that game against Japan in 2015 knock complacency out of the Springboks forever more?”

Japan’s 34-32 triumph over the Boks at the 2015 World Cup was a contest for the ages, a wonderful game of David and Goliath and rugby that was celebrated the oval globe over — including by legions of South Africans who knew an epic when they saw one.

But it was also more than three years ago, time in which South Africa have played 45 matches. Saturday’s 23 for the first Test of the end-of-year-tour, against England at Twickenham, includes only six of those who fell victim to the Cherry Blossoms.  

It was Whiteley’s turn to be deadpan, which he managed after greeting the question with a look not unlike that on the face of a camper tumbling out of a tent first thing in the morning to find a goat eating his laundry.

“At this present moment I don’t think about it at all,” he said, face still straight.

“Maybe if you had to watch the game or think of that World Cup it, you would remember it.

“We’re wise enough to know that you need to be the best that you can be.

“We’ve been through hard times in the past couple of years.

“We know you need to be on top of your game on this tour.

“You’re going to be tested.

“As a rugby supporter, obviously it’s something you remember.”

You knew Whiteley had to run out of the right things to say at some stage …

“But I’m not going to go and sit in my room and …” — again the melting snigger, a proper laugh this time — “… think of the Japan loss as a motivation for this weekend.”

Eish, these English. They’re all the same.