Twice since the dawn of democracy in South Africa, the Springboks have taken the trophy in one of the most gruelling sporting contests on the planet. With the announcement of the host country for the 2023 Rugby World Cup set to be made on November 15, will the Boks and their millions of supporters have reason to cry tears of joy once again?
Ten years ago, in the stands of the Stade de France, I watched tears well in the eyes of a friend, a journalist by trade but a South African by soul. The Springboks had just beaten England. The Rugby World Cup had been won. The stadium was rumbling with tears and beers.
It was getting close to midnight. The French used to play their matches late at night, something to do with the time of the news bulletin being sacrosanct, or so we were told. There were a good handful of South African journalists rushing to meet deadlines for newspapers back home, deadlines that had been stretched and adapted and broken.
On October 20, many of those writers and broadcasters who followed the Boks for seven weeks around France have been sharing memories. It was the best of times. There were no worst of times. The life of a journalist on tour has to be seen to be described. Think of a child with an expense account. A fair amount of time is spent travelling and waiting and discovering, and then there is the odd beer or two dozen.
I remember Paris and our hotel just around the corner from the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. We dubbed Avenue Rachel, the street our hotel was on, “Dog Pooh Avenue”, because of what Fifi and his poodle mates left on the pavement for us to dodge when their owners let them out of their apartments.
When you are away from home so long, you need a little spot to call your own. The Lux Bar is about halfway up the Rue Lepic. It opens at 7am and closes at 2am. Peter Ustinov, the actor, had been a regular when he was much younger. It appealed because of the sign outside that informed me they sold Stella for €3 between 6.30pm and 8.30pm.
The barman had a massive Elvis tattoo on his arm and played 50s and 60s rock ’n roll. I went there by myself one afternoon. Pretty soon there were five South African rugby writers ready for cheap beer at 6.29pm each day. There was a catch. You had to drink the beers standing up at the bar in order to get the discounted €3 price. The French have a very different price structure in their cafes and bars. They charge more the closer you get to the pavement.
I had found the Lux Bar on my regular run, which would take me past Fifi’s mess, the Moulin Rouge, the Lux Bar and up the many, many steps to the Sacre Coeur. The views of Paris from there are spectacular. One day, I heard a South African accent calling me, asking if I could speak English.
It was the wife of John Allen, the former Bok hooker. Allen laughed when he recognised me: “His English isn’t great.” They were looking for the Sacre Coeur. I pointed at the steps I had just run down. Allen stopped laughing. He wasn’t in great shape. So, I told him how to get to the lift that took tourists up the hill.
The memories. The Boks saw off Samoa in a brutal, extraordinary opening match that saw Schalk Burger banned for two weeks and put Jean de Villiers out of the tournament with a ruptured bicep. It was hard not to feel for De Villiers, a second World Cup gone to injury.
We watched the Boks wallop England, come close to a disaster against Tonga in Lens, before we headed south to Montpellier, where I celebrated my 40th birthday in an Australian bar run by a South African from Durban. Earlier that year, Robbie Hunter had become the first South African to win a stage of the Tour de France in Montpellier. I may have run up and down the street he won in a few times.
We stood with 50 000 others in the old port in Marseilles to watch France beat the All Blacks on a giant screen floated on a pontoon in the harbour, before cringing as the Boks had to be saved from a quarterfinal exit by JP Pietersen’s miracle tackle.
Paris welcomed us back for the final two weeks by announcing there was a train driver strike. I went to Rugby Town, a meeting place for fans on the Trocadero with a view of the Eiffel Tower. I bumped into Jean de Villiers there. He was going to hand the jerseys to the Boks ahead of their semifinal against Argentina.
We had a few beers and spoke of the drinks we had had in BokTown in Perth in 2003 when he had missed out on the World Cup after injuring his shoulder in a warm-up game in Springs of all places. I told him we really had to stop meeting like this.
And then on to the final. The part I played in the Bok win? Well, Rory Steyn, Madiba’s former bodyguard, called me to ask how to get to the Bok hotel. He had a DVD message for the team from Madiba. I chaperoned him to the hotel. I played bodyguard to Madiba’s bodyguard. They would never have won had it not been for me.
Near midnight in the Stade de France, our journey, the seven weeks of watching and writing and drinking and running and celebrating came to an end. It had been the best of times.
“I’m feeling very emotional,” said my journalist mate.
I sighed and closed my eyes for a second: “I know what you mean.”
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