In an excerpt from The Fireside Springbok – The Untold Stories that Make the Boks Great, MIKE GREENAWAY revisits the New Zealand Cavaliers’ controversial tour of South Africa in 1986.
In April 1986, just six months after PW Botha had wagged his finger at the world and committed South Africa to another era on the wrong side of the Rubicon, 30 rugby players slipped clandestinely out of New Zealand and popped up in Johannesburg – to the great surprise and delight of Springbok fans.
South African rugby had just joined its cricket counterparts in staging a rebel tour.
The eagerly awaited sequel to the tumultuous 1981 tour of New Zealand had been scheduled by the International Rugby Board for 1985, but the New Zealand government, the New Zealand Rugby Union and the IRB itself canned the All Blacks’ visit to the Republic.
Annoyed Bok fans were still brooding over the lost chance to get even with the All Blacks when Louis Luyt, the Transvaal Rugby Union and Yellow Pages (the business telephone directory company) collaborated to recruit the ’85 All Black tour squad minus just two players in scrumhalf David Kirk and wing John Kirwan.
Accurately billed as the Battle of the Giants, it would be a four-Test, 12-match tour under the stewardship of two All Black legends in Colin Meads and Ian Kirkpatrick. The presence of those hardnosed veterans of expeditions to South Africa gave the tour a seal of legitimacy.
The secret recruitment of the All Blacks was breathtaking in its daring and masterful in its execution. Only the blockbusting Luyt could have done it.
Of course, he did it with a nod and a wink from Danie Craven’s South African Rugby Board. Craven was the SARB delegate to the IRB and had to pretend he knew nothing of the tour when the Kiwis suddenly appeared.
Craven, with his best poker face, told the IRB that he would conduct an inquiry into how the tour came about – after it had finished, of course. No one recalls if the ‘inquiry’ ever took place.
On the flight over, the Kiwis decided that they would be called the Cavaliers.
Back in New Zealand they became known as the rebel All Blacks. None of the matches were televised in New Zealand and for running commentary they needed to tune in to South African radio.
Years later many a Kiwi would admit to having watched videotapes of the Test series and while few openly endorsed the tour, their rugby passion forced them behind closed curtains to watch the latest chapter of the old rivalry.
In South Africa, the mood was one of aggressive defiance. This was the time of the “sport and politics should not mix” refrain.
The seasoned Kiwi reporter Kip Brook covered the tour and he later wrote of his shock when a pugnacious Craven challenged him about some of his reports.
“One day while the Boks were training at Stellenbosch, Danie Craven approached me. He hammered his finger into my chest several times as he undiplomatically tried to tell me that I was a puppet of [New Zealand prime minister] David Lange and had been sent to South Africa to ruin the country’s reputation.’
The background was a comment made by Lange about Craven when the tour had materialised. Lange said: “Dr Danie Craven is probably the most dishonest person in politics or sport.”
Cocooned in their luxury hotels, the Cavaliers were largely oblivious to the state of emergency in South Africa.
With coach Meads cracking the whip, the focus was on beating the Boks. They also happened to be extremely well paid. It later emerged that each player was paid US$50,000, a fortune in 1986, especially for a rugby player because this was still the amateur era.
By contrast, the Springboks were given some token expense money (paid under the table) but in reality they were playing for a greater currency: the green and gold.
The Cavaliers were highly motivated to become the first New Zealand team to win a series in South Africa and the adversity of being on a rebel tour gave them a special bond. Every player had Test experience and for the first Test, at Newlands, their starting lineup boasted 219 caps while the Boks could muster just 75.
This was not surprising. Since the ’81 tour, the Boks had played just six Tests in five years as isolation squeezed – in 1982 they played South America twice and in 1984 they played two Tests against England and another two against South America.
Two heroes of ’81, Ray Mordt and Rob Louw, had joined rugby league giants Wigan in 1985 and others had retired.
Still, there were only six new caps in the Bok team for the first Test.
Mordt was replaced by Jaco Reinach, the holder of the national record for the 400m. Christo Ferreira stepped in for the retired Divan Serfontein. There were new caps for a precocious hooker called Uli Schmidt, a rangy No 8 in Jannie Breedt, a war-horse flank in Wahl Bartmann, and completing a fine loose trio was a mighty 22-year-old named Gert Smal.
Bartmann got his chance because the form flank, Burger Geldenhuys, had infamously ruled himself out of contention because of his punch-from-behind that broke the jaw of tour captain Andy Dalton in the match against Northern Transvaal.
Craven was outraged and insisted that Geldenhuys would never again play for the Springboks. He never did. Craven was moved to say: “There is no room in my vocabulary for an incident like that – no room and no mercy.”
Coach Cecil Moss, a member of the Springbok team that trounced the All Blacks 4-0 in 1949, used just 24 players during the series. There was no need for changes because the Boks played excellent rugby.
The first Test belonged to Naas Botha, the Bok captain. Rainy Newlands was a mud bath and the Kiwis had the game under control when they led 15-12 midway through the second half.
In typical fashion, Botha exhorted his forwards to give him the ball. They did.
He kicked a penalty with 10 minutes to go and then ran a knife through Cavalier hearts when he deftly chipped across the field into space for winger Carel du Plessis, who majestically outpaced the defence before pouncing on the ball as it slithered towards the dead-ball line.
Botha then kicked the water-logged leather ball over from the touchline.
In the conditions, it was a magnificent effort and maybe Naas felt a touch better for missing the conversion attempt to win the famous ‘flour bomb’ Test at Eden Park in 1981.
Botha scored 17 points and was described thus by Kiwi reporter Don Cameron: “With his hair shining like a golden beacon in the swirling rain, Botha turned a scruffy Test into a quite incredible personal triumph.”
But the Midas touch deserted him in Durban in the second Test when he fluffed six penalties and four drop-goal attempts to allow the Cavaliers in for a deserved 19-18 victory.
On the Highveld, the Cavaliers were well beaten 33-18 at Loftus Versfeld and 24-10 at Ellis Park.
There were unforgettable moments from the Boks in those Tests: great tries by Danie Gerber, Schmidt, Garth Wright (he replaced Ferreira for the third and fourth Tests) and Reinach.
Those watching on TV will never forget the moment when Reinach got the ball in space: “Hier is spoed [here is speed],” said the commentator Gerhard Viviers before gaining excited momentum: “Hier is spoed!! Hier is spoed!!!!” The sprinter almost flew across 50m to score a sensational try.
And nobody who saw it will forget Cavaliers prop Gary Knight’s descent into oblivion thanks to Smal’s right hook in response to provocation. A flour bomb did it at Eden Park in 1981, a Smal haymaker repeated the dose five years later.
The intent to win from the Cavaliers was evident in how they took the fight to the South African teams. Their match against Natal was especially violent. The great Springbok Keith Oxlee said he had never seen more fighting. The video tape of the game showed 64 punches.
There was controversy when the Cavaliers hooker Hika Reid made the feelings of his team clear to referee Ken Rowlands at the final whistle of the fourth and final Test when he gave the little Welshman a shoulder nudge as they left the field.
The Cavaliers had put their bodies on the line to win that Test at Ellis Park. Victory would have meant a drawn series and to underline their intent, they had performed the haka before kick-off, for the first time on the tour.
Importantly, in this tour finale, they were also making a statement about their identity as All Blacks, albeit in disguise.
At the post-match function, a disgruntled Dalton accused Rowlands of bias in his handling of the four Tests.
Botha was cutting when it was his turn as captain to address the audience.
“Now you know how we felt in 1981,” he said to Dalton, alluding to how another Welshman, Clive Norling, had engineered victory for the All Blacks in the deciding Test at Eden Park.
The Cavaliers went home to a slap on the wrist – an effective two-Test suspension. Most were in the All Blacks team that won the inaugural World Cup a year later.
Some sulking South Africans took to wearing T-shirts that said “No World Cup without the Boks” when the 1987 World Cup took place in New Zealand.
The Boks might well have played in that inaugural World Cup and won it if their government had not been so slow in recognising that human rights, sport and politics did go hand in hand.
1996 REVISITED: All Blacks focused, Boks distracted
That Bok team of 1986 was extremely gifted. The backline boasted once-in-a-generation stars that were in their prime. Botha, Danie Gerber, Carel and Michael du Plessis, and Johan Heunis were magnificent players and for one brief season, their stars were aligned. It is such a pity that this backline went into isolation when the Cavaliers left.
The reality is that the Springboks would not play an official Test match until the genuine All Blacks returned to Ellis Park in 1992.
– Order The Fireside Springbok directly from the author at mike.greenaway@iol.co.za or buy it a book store near you.
Photo: Wessel Oosthuizen/Gallo Images
The post 1986 revisited: Boks repel NZ rebels appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
In an excerpt from The Fireside Springbok, Mike Greenaway revisits the New Zealand Cavaliers’ controversial tour of South Africa in 1986.
The post 1986 revisited: Boks repel NZ rebels appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Read More
