The Springboks ruined the narrative, and they don't like that up North

 

Warren Gatland’s utterings on how the game of rugby should be changed to save it have got quite a response.

His suggestions aren’t all bad – the return of a 5m scrum when an attacking player is held up over the tryline, for example, I agree with – but, along with many others, I believe that his thinking is largely founded on bitterness and frustration. The domination, once again, of the Southern Hemisphere teams and the success of the Erasmus/Nienaber deep-thought approach to tactics and their canniness in gaining an edge by using the laws of the game in a way that the others haven’t thought of, wasn’t what was planned for.

There’s an analysis of his suggestions on the Planet Rugby website that unpacks just how he hopes to take away that edge https://www.planetrugby.com/news/warren-gatland-thinks-up-two-radical-ideas-which-would-take-away-the-springboks-tactical-weapons

I have to concede that sometimes I go a little ‘conspiracy theory’ around the edges, especially when it comes to World Rugby and their bias against South Africa – a fact borne out by too many examples to be simply dismissed as victimhood or sour grapes.

I’m not going to get into all of that now, but Gatland’s theories, and the widespread acceptance that they seem to have gained, brings me back to the view that there is a narrative - supported by World Rugby - that the wheel has turned and that the power now lies in the Northern Hemisphere, that the best players are there, that Ireland and France are the best teams and that one of them was a shoo-in to win the 2023 World Cup.

It was already apparent three years earlier, with the 2021 British and Irish Lions tour. World Rugby has stated that they regard the Lions Tour as second only to the World Cup when it comes to promoting the game world-wide. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the audience numbers bear it out. The problem though, is that in hyping it, a narrative was created. The Lions are an almost mystical amalgamation of four nations, four national teams who rise every four years to take on the best of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. and part of the plan is that they should beat them, of course

Any sporting contest, however, belongs to both teams on the field. The circumstances must be such that they have an equal chance of success. Sure, the home team will have the advantage of a noisy crowd on their side, but that apart, everyone involved in the staging of the game has a duty to ensure its fairness.

The hype around the Lions wasn’t really in line with that – the home nation hardly featured in it. You got the impression that they were only there to be the losing team. There was no home advantage for South Africa in 2021 because of Covid, of course, although you could argue it was already gone in 2009 when the spending power of the British pound meant that there were more Lions fans at the games than local ones.

By 2021 the story had developed into a Northern vs Southern Hemisphere confrontation, with little doubt about which side the international body was on.

The 2021 Springboks were fresh from the World Cup triumph and the accusations and criticisms alleging that they had somehow cheated and didn’t deserve to win it were flying around. The same ones that were to return even more hysterically in 2023.

So, the 2021 narrative went, the fabulous B&I Lions were going to put the record straight against a Springbok side that might have won the cup, but certainly didn’t play good rugby. They were brutes, who dominated physically and bent the substitution laws to suit their style.

Rassie Erasmus alluded to these things in the video he produced after the 1^st Test in 2021. He mentioned that the narrative went that the Springboks were thugs, playing negative rugby and he had asked for them to be judged on what they did on the field, not on those perceptions. He also asked for equal respect, for the players and, especially, the captain to be treated in the same way as their opponents.

That he felt they didn’t get that is history now and his infamous video critique went public thanks, apparently, to the referee himself. It led to Erasmus’ ban from the game, of course. I will never know or understand what he was trying to achieve, but I’m pretty sure Erasmus’ actions were brave acts of sacrifice, aimed at derailing the prevailing narrative.

Had he followed the process and waited for a reply via official referee review channels things would have turned out very differently. Nick Berry wasn’t a cheat, but his refereeing certainly confirmed what was being said – that Springbok side could never beat the Lions legally by playing their kind of rugby. The second Test would most likely have gone the same way and the Northern Hemisphere will have taken its rightful place on the world rugby throne.

That didn’t happen of course, but the story didn’t end there. There was again a sense that South Africa’s victory wasn’t real because it wasn’t fair.

With that in mind, we set out on the road to the 2023 World Cup. Ireland and France were dominating their opponents. Ireland beat the All Backs on tour and France scraped home against the Boks in Paris after Du Toit was red-carded for being pushed into contact and the communication between the referee and the TMO mysteriously failed before he could review the winning try, which came after a clear double movement.

No matter – we aren’t whining about referees here – the upshot was that Ireland and France were designated the “best teams on Earth” by the Six Nations media and SA and NZ were declared no-hopers for the World Cup. Everyone up north, World Rugby included, agreed with that and the narrative was taken up again – the Northern Hemisphere’s time has come and everyone else might as well not turn up.

The 2023 Six Nations tournament was widely touted by the commentators as the “best rugby tournament on the planet” and some of French and Irish players were being called the best rugby players in the world. Super Rugby, the Rugby Championship and the World Cup-winning players that were coming to France from New Zealand and South Africa later in the year were discounted. And the fact that the All Blacks and Springboks had shown that they know how to win the World Cup, three times each, didn’t count for much either.

I wrote this, back in May 2023: “The team that wins the World Cup will win seven games in a row in September and October. What happened in February and March counts for nothing at all.” OK, so the Boks did lose to Ireland in the pool games, as they did against New Zealand in 2019, but you get my point. It’s not an original story, it’s what Naas meant when he said the Currie Cup isn’t won in May. What surprises me is that there are rugby experts who don’t seem to know that.

So, having three Southern Hemisphere sides in the semifinals in 2023, with Ireland not getting past the quarters again and the hosts getting dumped out on their home field, wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was the way the final panned out.

Once again, the response was to declare the Springbok win illegitimate. The behaviour of the crowds, and the abuse of referees was taken to a new level. Yes, we also complain when we lose, but after that, no-one can ever point it out to us again.

World Rugby’s response, at their awards evening, was to pretend that none of it had happened and to reward the Northern teams as if they had taken the story to its desired conclusion and come up trumps anyway. 

The ungracious behaviour goes on and on. Warren Gatland’s plan is just a continuation of that.