We’ve Got The Currie Cup, They Don’t Know What They’re Missing

While the Spingboks were excluded from international sport, rugby remained as strong as ever within the republic. The Mole can remember watching tapes of the Currie Cup in the late eighties and early nineties, with huge stadia packed full of crowds and an incredible atmosphere generated over some very ordinary ten-man rugby played at altitude. There was a hysteria about it, an almost tangible belief amongst those crowds that everybody else was out of step, that the Currie Cup was the highest standard of rugby around, and that the All Blacks were only fake champions because the Boks weren’t invited to the World Cup.
The forwards were absolutely enormous, the props huge, red-necked and as fat as fools, and a tan-coloured ball flew for miles and miles in the thin air and bounced twice as high as any ball had ever bounced in the Five Nations. It was bright, wild and very foreign.

Fantastic article.

Well, that pretty much blows MZ's opinion that the piece is "well researched and written, informative and balanced" clean out of the water, eh?

what?

The Springboks WERE invited. The author is 100% incorrect.

You're assuming that he is suggesting the "crowds" were wrong on two counts. I think he's suggesting the `Boks weren't invited as a fact and the crowd believes the `Boks weren't champions because of that.

Fucking stupid five quote limit.

So what's the truth about the invitation?

I'd always believed that the seven other IRB (then the IRFB) members were included as a formality, and they chose another nine to invite. South Africa were never considered because of the Gleneagles Agreement.

That was a very fast threadjack. Good work lads.

The Mole and Whiff or Cordite are really good on Irish rugby issues. With Cordite there's a slight bias against Munster given that the two authors are from Leinster and Ulster, but they take the piss or criticise anyone who deserves it.
There analysis is top notch. It's just utterly depressing that the media here are so utterly inept at doing their jobs and we have to rely on bloggers to do proper analysis and discussion.

i always understood that craven supported the WC idea and used his influence to get it going - SA was invited but declined on the basis of a gentleman's agreement that they would.

Each of the eight full members of the IRFB (France had joined the three main southern hemisphere unions in the inner sanctum as recently as 1978) had two votes, so the four home unions would all but have a veto if they stuck together.

South Africa was the great unknown. The sports boycott made it impossible for the country to play abroad. As always, SARB president Danie Craven (an IRFB delegate) thought ahead. He realised that favours given at no real cost now might well pay off later. His decision to support the proposal in effect guaranteed that South Africa would later host a similar tournament – if the first one succeeded and apartheid was relaxed. The wily former Springbok captain thus set the stage for the 1995 World Cup (won by South Africa at home), which cemented the place of rugby, until then a symbol of Afrikaner supremacy, in the multicultural nation.

Half agree and half don't - the media world is changing and blogs and even (in a small way) forums like this (once you know who to engage with and when stuff is just banter and trolling - so not as accessible) are becoming far more useful when it comes to news, info and analysis. Tehre is still great benefit from reading selected analysis from the print media from players/ex-pros with genuine insight in to the game, but they're not the only source of info and discussion anymore.

But agree with the main point - our rugby media (especially the more high profile stuff and our national broadcaster) is, for the most part, woeful. And those two blogs are well worth a read.

Was listening to Off the Ball lsat week, and they were discussing the Keane interview. Without saying it, they made the comparison to John Giles who, when first being spoken to about his OtB slot said that they should ask him questions that seem obvious, because a lot of things he takes for granted, because he just understands them. The point being Keane, was asked 'how to effect a game' and didn't really know how to describe it effectively. It was clear that he understood it instinctively, rather than verbally.

When you read some of the lads going on about technical stuff, there are things that you don't even notice when you play, but some of them are able to properly explain it. (Emmett Byrne's recent propping talk and the articles would be a good example.)

The thing is, that level of quality is rare enough in the mainstream analysis. The IT has some decent stuff, but most of the rest is pretty poor for it.

Off topic : Thornley was in the Westbury on Saturday night with his wife/girlfriend.
Not a bad looking gal.

Van Morrison and Michele Rocca were in the Westbury too. Rocca is a stunner for her age.

No rule 1 unfortunately.

That's OK. He died in the mid 1700s so he's probably not real photogenic at the moment anyway.

The Mole can remember watching tapes of the Currie Cup in the late eighties and early nineties, with huge stadia packed full of crowds and an incredible atmosphere generated over some very ordinary ten-man rugby played at altitude.

My favourite player of all time, the reason I love rugby.

SA Tour 1994

Whether it was that the touring Boks were on a charm offensive after years in the international wilderness [institutionalised racism can have a stultifying effect on your public perception, surprisingly] or that it was just a typical between-training-sessions space filler, an audience of Dublin schoolboys from a number of the traditional rugby-playing schools were given an impromptu half-day and corralled into Donnybrook to sit in the stands and watch some of the touring Boks take questions and show a few tips. The Mole was one of those kids. The Boks weren’t even playing against Ireland on the tour, but they felt the need to reach out and touch.

“Where’s Joubert?”

The big draw was Rudolph Straeuli, who would go on to be an incredibly unsuccessful coach of the Boks and commandant of Kamp Staaldraad. There were a few others there, but Straeuli is the one that stands out in my memory. At the time, he was the starting Springbok No8, and a more than decent player: big, rough, uncompromising, hard-hitting, made of the same sort of stock of which South African loose forwards have been made since they took up the game on the veldt. He was only in the saddle for a season and a half for the Boks, and lost his starting role at No8 during the World Cup knock-out stages when Natal’s big lock Mark Andrews was moved back to eighth man, but back in the Autumn of 1994 he was in his pomp, scoring tries in successive tests against Argentina, Scotland and Wales.

It started off fairly innocently. They’d given a short talk and asked if there were any questions, and somebody from down the Bective end asked if André Joubert was going to be there.

The question wasn’t without reason. Joubert had scored six tries and thirty-eight points in the Springboks’ 78-7 walloping of Welsh champions Swansea on Guy Fawkes’ Night the previous week, and looked so much better than everyone else on the pitch that it was pretty obvious that he was the most talented player in the world. He could do it all – he kicked points with precision, he was imperious in the air, he could counterattack, he hit the line like nobody in rugby and he had perfect hands. And he scored six f*cking tries in eighty minutes.

“No. André is not here,” Straueli answered in his thick Transvaal accent. [That translated as "Nao. Ondraey iz nut heeyah."] Kids may lack life experience, but they know a humourless straightman when they see one. For f*ck’s sake, they’re in school most of the time – there’s nothing they know better! From then on, every time Straueli and his minions demonstrated a drill ["Und yuu putt the boll heeyahh, yah?"] and asked if there were any questions ["Uhh theyahh unny kusschons?] some wiseacre would stick his hand up: “Is André on his way?” Classic.

Kids Know Funny + Rudolf Straueli Is A Totally Humourless Afrikaans Rugby Player = Lifetime Memories.

Well, that pretty much blows MZ's opinion that the piece is "well researched and written, informative and balanced" clean out of the water, eh?

The South African would come into the three-quarter line at a glide in the classic position – between second centre and winger – ease down on the accelerator down and zoom away from the defense. It always looked like he had more gas to give it if he chose to do so. He was never straining for the line, or showing some running-back-esque burst of oomph … he just went through the gears like few players of the last thirty years. He was a swerver, not a stepper. It was never stop/start when he had the ball, always smooth.

The Mole would kill for some tape of his days in the Currie Cup in the late 1980s and early 1990s, be it for Orange Free State or Natal. If he had that sort of speed at 30 years old, he must have been simply astounding in his early 20s.

Juba’s prime fell in that era between when the old farts were celebrating their heroes like kings through endless volumes of vanity publishing and when professional rugby was about to take off, with all the television coverage that that entails. He’s neither heralded in clubhouse song, nor glorified on YouTube. That doesn’t stop him front being one of the finest players to ever don the bottle green. Take a knee boys, we’re in the presence of greatness.