BOKS AND BIRDS

Bismarck du Plessis
(Image : SA Rugby)

“But this isn’t a sentimental business…
especially in South Africa.”

Summerhill is not traditional Blue Crane country, so when six of our national birds checked in for the weekend at Ntaba Nqumo (Decision Hill) at the foot of the farm, the portents were good for a Springbok victory. They had chosen one of the most serene spots in the district, with views stretching across the length and the breadth of the Land of Legends. Named for the dilemma faced by the two generals on their next strategic move, this “koppie” is where former prime minister, Louis Botha, took command of the Boer forces from the hero of Majuba, General Piet Joubert, in November 1899. The sight before them surely inspired these two soldiers that this was a country worth fighting for.

In the end, the Springboks got home on Sunday, but it was a close-run thing in which the Welsh played out of their socks, and where our countrymen were anything but convincing. A margin of a single point was hardly suggestive of a team on its way to retaining the World Cup, and in the process the match took its toll in the way of injuries. Our go-to man, Victor Matfield, pulled a hamstring, and Jean de Villiers, whose pained expression as he left the field with a rib injury was a replay for him of the opening match at the 2007 World Cup, could be on his way home.

What the outcome may well have done, though, was signal an early warning of the shortcomings of the kick-and-chase game plan the Springboks persevere with, despite its lack of success in the last year since the rules changed. The modern game calls for the ball’s retention, and you kick your possession to attackers like the All Blacks and the Wallabies at your peril. The match probably also resolved a few selection issues, with Francois Hougaard’s try in the closing ten minutes underscoring the fact that Bryan Habana may well have reached his sell-by date. It took the replacement 10 minutes to score : Habana hasn’t done so in his last 10 matches. Bigger than that though, was the impact Bismarck du Plessis made when he replaced our captain. John Smit has been a talismanic leader of the Springboks for some time, and his 100 test matches are testimony to one of the finest captains to wear the green and gold.

But this isn’t a sentimental business, especially in South Africa, and if the Springboks are going to be at their effective best for the rest of the tournament, John Smit will have to do his inspiring from the bench, and from the change room. He may well have a role to play in the impact department in the closing 15 to 20 minutes of a match, especially when his experience and his leadership will be most needed, but to have him grinding away for 80 minutes is not only asking him to go beyond his most effective range, but it is to deny the Springboks the services of the most destructive Number Two in the world.

WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS AND HIS TROPHY

Webb Ellis Trophy
(Image : WRNews/SA WP)

RUGBY WORLD CUP 2011

For South Africa, the Rugby World Cup started in 1995. Prior to that, we were excluded for reasons that had nothing to do with rugby or the players, and since South Africa had ranked for almost a century among the world’s leading rugby playing nations, the real games only began when the tournament came to this country. The favourites that year were the reigning world champions, Australia, and they came to the first match against the Springboks as the only team in the tournament to have remained unbeaten in 1995. Names like Campese, Lynagh, Horan and Little were commonplace in one of the most glittering line-ups the tournament has known. If there was an Achilles heel, it lay in the fact that the team was laden with veterans, and they might not have quite been the players they were when they demolished the All Blacks in the semi-finals at the 1991 version at Dublin’s Landsdowne Road. I was there that day, and the Wallabies were awesome. It wasn’t surprising when they rolled England in the final, nor was it surprising, given their “seniority”, that the Boks thumped them 27-18 at Newlands in 1995.

South Africa’s bid to become the first country in the world to retain the William Webb Ellis trophy starts this weekend, and there’s a bit of déjà vu with the Springbok team of 2011 and the Australians of 1995. Like them, we are the reigning world champions, and like them, we have a massively experienced team, indeed, the most capped group of players ever to attend the World Cup tournament. And like those Aussies of yore, it’s probably fair to say that Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, John Smit, Fourie du Preez and Bryan Habana are not quite up to the game they were able to put on when they last hoisted the trophy in Paris in 2007. No fewer than 10 of them are north of 30. The lead-up to this year’s tournament tells us their form is not the same, and yet there is one stock difference between South Africa now and Australia in 1995. That lies in the fact that our performances going into this year’s tournament have been anything but inspiring, though the suggestion is that we’ve kept our best game until last, and that other sides might have peaked already. Even if it were not so, we’d have to be telling ourselves that, otherwise there’d be little purpose in attending, and so we’ll have to wait for the next few weeks to find out.

As matters stand, the international rankings consider New Zealand and Australia to be ahead of us, and deservedly so. There is nothing about the Northern Hemisphere sides to prompt the belief that the Cup could find a new home in that direction, but knock-out tournaments of this sort have been known to produce the unexpected. Who could believe that the All Blacks, who have undoubtedly been consistently the best team in the world for the past two decades or more, have not lifted the trophy since 1987? That, we guess, is all we need to know in trying to find a winner, and that breathes hope into the sails of every country in attendance with a pretence for the Higher Things In Life. The mind games started long ago: it’s time for the real games now.

TRIPPI : AN EXPLANATION

Charley Trippi - Second from right
(Photo : Nate Fine/NFL)

LEGENDS : CHARLEY TRIPPI

Replying to our article. Johann Rupert responds :

“The name Trippi also confused me - I said to Gaynor that it sounded like a ballet dancer. Having Googled it some years ago I found the source, a combination of Bakkies Botha and Bryan Habana!”

“Extract from The Georgia Bulldogs by Shane Hannon”

Still regarded by many as the greatest all-around athlete ever to don the red and black, Charley Trippi almost spent his life as a coal miner in a small town of Pittston, Pennsylvania.

That was the destiny Trippi, the son of a coal miner, faced before he was spotted by the late Harold “War Eagle” Ketron, who had played for the Bulldogs in the early 1900’s. After graduation, Ketron ran Coca-Cola bottling plants in Western Pennsylvania, where he always kept an eye out for athletic prospects.

At Pittston High School, nobody thought much of the skinny 160-pound kid with wavy black hair, but Ketron had a gut instinct about Trippi’s potential as a prize halfback and he offered the 19-year-old a scholarship to Georgia. Boosters could do that in those days.

“I owe a lot to ‘War Eagle’ Ketron,” said Trippi, who is retired but still resides in Athens. ‘“He watched me play high school and took a great interest in my welfare. I was very fortunate to get a scholarship offer - I wanted to get out of that area. I couldn’t visualize mining coal eight hours a day for the rest of my life.”

“I had dozens of offers and a lot of pressure to go to other schools,” he said. “But I’m a man of my word, and I had told Mr. Ketron that I was going to Georgia, and I was not changing my mind.”

One trip to California was like a dream for Trippi and for most of the Bulldogs, who had never been out West. The team dined with some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities, including Bob Hope, Rita Hayworth and Errol Flynn.

“Each player sat between two stars,” Trippi said. “I drew Susan Hayward and Barbara Britton.”

Days later, Trippi got chills when he took the field on game day. It wasn’t surprising considering the Rose Bowl crowd of 90,000 was more than four times the population of his hometown.

Trippi was a major factor against UCLA. With Sinkwich nursing two badly sprained ankles, No. 62 carried the rushing load and gained 130 yards and was named the game’s outstanding player.

World War II interrupted the playing career of many college athletes, including Trippi, who served close to three years in the Air Force before being discharged. He returned to Sanford Stadium for the final six games in 1945.

“Of course, you’re disappointed because the war destroyed what you planned to do in your career,” Trippi said. “But everyone else was in same situation. You just had to recover after it was over and pursue again what you had started.”

The transition wasn’t as easy for Trippi because coach Butts had implemented a new offensive system while he was away - switching from the single wing to a T-formation. It took Trippi a while to get the feel of the new offense, but he learned to like it because it gave him more opportunities to throw the ball, something he did well.

In the season finale against Georgia Tech in 1945, Trippi set an SEC record for passing yards in a single game at the time (323) and also gained 61 yards rushing for a total of 384 yards total offense, which was another SEC record at the time.

The junior capped his war-shortened season by helping the Bulldogs to a 20-6 win over Tulsa in the Oil Bowl. Trippi completed a 47-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter and then ran back a punt for a touchdown. The 68-yarder is still considered one of the most spectacular plays in Bulldog history as Trippi “practically touched both sidelines,” completely reversed his field at one point and ran over two Tulsa tacklers who had him trapped.

“I ran on instinct,” Trippi said of his style. “Occasionally, I would reverse my field or go against the grain because it came natural to me.”

Trippi has been honored many times over the years. He was selected to the College Football Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. He is also one of only four Bulldog players to have his jersey retired.

“Life has been good to me because of sports,” Trippi said. “I feel very fortunate that my dreams came true.”

WHO SAID RACING WAS SHORT ON CELEBRITIES?

Roland Schoeman and Jeannie D
(Photo : Deon Gurling)

J&B MET 2010

Readers of these columns will recall our piece of yesterday, where we spoke of Springbok coaches Jake White and Andre Maakgraaff, and the “wildebeest catcher”, Tiaan Strauss, among the many we’d spent time with at the J&B Met. Add to the list international rugby’s Player of the Year in 2008, Bryan Habana; the man that torpedoed the All Blacks’ 1995 World Cup hopes with his titanic drop goal in extra time, Joel Stransky, and double Olympic Gold medallist swimmer, Roland Schoeman, and you begin to understand the allure of a good event. In South Africa at least, the Met remains a “must do” on the cv’s of even the most celebrated.

Our Boys Did It, After All

There is no prouder nation on this earth this morning, as the Springboks came away with the William Webb Ellis Trophy following their close-call victory over England in Saturday night’s World Cup final. These things mean a great deal to any country, yet in South Africa, with all of its complexities and the issues that divided our past, it means all of that and a whole lot more.

While we’re very much a work in progress, to see our President, Thabo Mbeki hoisted high on the shoulders of the predominantly white players that stood beneath him, was a signal of considerable proportions, and in spite of the contradictions and confusions, we remain a country on course.

Sport has done more for the unity of South Africa than all the politicians and businessmen put together, and racing is no exception to that rule.

From the perspective of its advancement of the previously-disadvantaged community, racing is at the forefront in discharging its responsibilities to the nation, and without any prompting, Summerhill has been championing this cause long before we became a fledgling democracy in 1994.

Our hope is that in the years to come, our rugby champions will reflect the demographics of this country more evenly, because unleashing all the available talent will make us a stronger, more cohesive rugby-playing unit than we’ve even been, and that will save us having to recruit too many “Islanders” from the All Blacks.

Meanwhile, and because history tells us no nation has held the championship for more than four years, please come and visit us during that time, so that you can see the champions in action, for fear we give it up to some other country when New Zealand host the event in 2011. Until then, greetings from the champions!

It would be remiss of us to end this note without a word about the opposition. In true British style, England stuck to their dogged guns manfully, and tested us to the whistle. There were more than a few of us that remembered we had English blood coursing through so many of our veins, not to mention those of our horses. They were big in defeat too, in good old English fashion.

History will remember this world cup as a second Isandlwana, and we fear it will be four long years before you English get a shot at a repeat of Rorke’s Drift!

Images courtesy of sarugby.net