PaarlBok
Rod McCall (65)
The rugby tour that have a lot of side showings for the wrong reasons. Rugby and tensewise the best in history for me.
Beeld
http://www.beeld.com/By/Nuus/Rugby-agter-doringdraad-20110909-3
Beeld
http://www.beeld.com/By/Nuus/Rugby-agter-doringdraad-20110909-3
Rugby behind barbed wire
2011-09-09 21:13
The Rugby World Cup started yesterday, and the Springboks play their first game tomorrow. Monday will be 30 years since the Flourbomb-test. ORG POTGIETER looked back at the events of 12 September 1981.
Protesters who curse them, keep awake at night, must be kept off the pitch by barbed wire and become violent with police have along with bedding down in squash courts have become common place to the boks. But a low flying plane repeatedly dropping flourboms is something entirely new to them.
On 12 September 1981 Eden Park in Auckland was the scene of the much vaunted Flourbomb-test and the conclusion of the most famous, albeit for the wrong reasons, tour in Springbok history.
The problems began early when the team began the long route to NZ via the USA, as Australia had prevented the “apartheid team” from entering their airspace.
That this tour would not be an ordinary one was evident from their first game at Poverty Bay Gisborne. Despite all the rhetoric and pre-debates on the tour, nobody expected that it would lead to the largest civil disobedience since the demonstrations against the Vietnam war. Groups for and against the tour, had violently attacked each other. Policemen not only had to keep the groups apart, but also had to defend themselves against violence.
A Newspaper describe the tour as a ‘war that was fought twice a week’, and after the Poverty bay incident, that is exactly what it became.
The whole country was divided: on the street in the workplace and even into families. Policemen had to act against not only their countrymen, but also their friends and family for 56 long days. More than 150,000 people, of whom 1500 were charged in 28 centres, took part in more than 200 demonstrations.
The second tour match (against Waikato in Hamilton) was cancelled when protesters occupied the field and spread rumours that a light aircraft was stolen and was on route. Even the New Zealand police were caught off guard by the unprecedented violence in a normally peaceful country.
The same fate befell the match three weeks later against South Canterbury in Timaru. It was a week after the first test in Christchurch that the Springboks, for their own safety, bedded down on squash courts for fear that otherwise they would not be able to reach the field on Saturday.
"I think nobody expected that it will be that bad," recalled the captain Wynand Claassen. It was not as bad in the south and in the countryside, but there were constant protests and a police presence but more so in the larger city centres with their universities.
The All Blacks won the first test 14-9. For the second one, the Springbok team spent the night in the locker room as a place to sleep, and to prepare for the game.
The action began early in the morning with 7000 protesters coming together in downtown Wellington. Many wore helmets and carried shields whilst wielding sticks. Roads leading into the city were occupied, so too were the roads and pedestrian routes to Athletic Park. Skirmishes between protesters and rugbyg-wathcers (fans) and between protesters and police were common.
The Boks won the test 24-12 and so doing set the scene for the third and decisive test, the one that would become known as the Flourbomb-test.
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This test was filled with problems for the Springboks from the start. They moved into the pavilion on the Friday at Eden Park, and the very late withdrawals by Theuns Stofberg and De Villiers Visser meant Hennie Bekker (who had a groin injury) and Rob Louw had to take their places at the last moment.
All possible precautions to ensure the safety of the players had been taken including emergency exits from the field, were hastily prepared.
However, no one could have been prepared for the light aircraft that bombarded the field prior and during the test with flour-bombs, pamphlets and smoke-bombs. All told the aircraft made 69 passing’s.
The All Blacks went to a 16-3 lead in the first half, but the Springboks after the break furiously fought back. Two tries through winger Ray Mordt made the score 18-22.
Danie Gerber: "I think part of the difference was that in the 2nd half, the plane came from behind our backs. We could then concentrate more on what happened in front of us. "
Wynand Claassen: "You are under tremendous pressure, and the important thing is to keep the guys focused. You say we should think of the people at home, we must win this test. The team of 1965 was in the same situation and lost with 3-20. We would not be so remembered.
"When we got back down for a scrum, Clive Norling (the referee) said time is up and the scrum would be the last movement of the game. I told the guys we now have to score. ".
And they did. Naas Botha skipped Gerber with a cut-out pass, but Colin Beck was caught with the ball. The ball came loose. Botha kicked it forward, gained control, run a few feet, drew his man and give the ball Mordt for his third try!
Botha's kick from the corner was missed: 22-22. But the game went on. And on. And on. Until the Norling gave the Abs a controversial free kick in the 11th minute of injury time in the Springbok half.
Claassen: "The ball was still in Divan Serfontein's hands, he blew us because we quickly hooked into a scrum which was not a scrum was. The All Blacks took a quick tap and ran five yards with the ball and were tackle, Norling changed the free kick into a penalty kick - apparently because Gerrie Germishuys way down the wing did not fall back fast enough ... " Allan Hewson proceeded to slot the winning penalty for the AB’s.
"The people at home," the team and even many New Zealanders thought a drawn test and a shared series would have been a just reward for a team that had endured so much, but the scoreboard read differently: All Blacks 25, Boks 22.
Gerber: "If they have not stopped me, I would have beaten that man."
The Welsh referee has acknowledged years later that he may have been wrong to allocate a free kick, but the penalty was the right decision.
Norling: "I got a trifle flustered in the heat of battle. In the second test, the Springboks dropped the scrum, but Serfontein quickly fed, and they hooked. When he lingered, I thought it would happen again and blew the whistle for a free kick. But the penalty, I doubt not. It should have been right out in front as the Boks fell over the ball in the ruck. "
Claassen: "I think Norling just wanted a decision - in the test and the series. To us he said the penalty was because Gerrie Germishuys way down there on the wing had not retreated. "
Logic dictates that if the free kick was not awarded, the Springboks would have won the scrum, and put the ball into touch in AB territory, thus finishing the game and drawing the series.
BACKGROUND
The Springboks experienced the first protests against apartheid on the 1969 tour of Britain , wherein Mannetjies Rouxm kicked a demonstrators bottom when he ran onto the field, much to the disgust of the fucking hippies.
The 1971 touring team to Australia also experienced angry protests.
South Africa's 1973 tour to New Zealand was banned by the government of Mr. Norman Kirk – partly in order not to bring the 1974 Commonwealth Games to be held in Christchurch into disrepute. (not sure about this one, tough to translate, but from the Afrikaans version I gather that the tour was not allowed in order to skip any potential problems it might cause the Commonwealth games in 74)
In 1976 Mr.. Robert Muldoon's National Party came to power. He approved a trip to SA and the All Blacks lost the series in SA 1-3. This initiated all 28 African countries to boycott he Olympics in Montreal.
In 1977 the Commonwealth countries undertook the Gleneagles Agreement. It said that "it was the duty of member countries to fight the evil of apartheid with power and opinion by opposing all sporting contacts with South Africa and other countries that discriminated on the basis of race, color or ethnic origin" .
In 1981 the National Party under Muldoon was still the ruling party, and he was a strong supporter of the tour. His motivation was that sport and politics should be separated.
His party later that year in the general election remained in power.
THE TOUR'S lighter moments
Of course there were between all the tensions of the tour also lighter moments. Danie Gerber remembers the fanaticism of those opposed to the tour.
"A few of us came out of a store and bumbed into a woman with a baby in her arms. She attacked Hennie Bekker, the tallest guy in the team, like a mad banshee,. And to free both her hands, she threw down the baby right there, luckily it was on a lawn. "
Gerber and Ray Mordt one evening took revenge on the screaming hippies outside their hotel. "We filled Coke bottles with water and from the balcony started pelting their cars. Mine was a hit - I hail from Despatch, where we know a thing or two about slinging rocks. Ray managed to hit a pot plant on a lower balcony. " They had to give an account of the bottles and shards on their balcony, but their excuse was that they were sleeping - it must come from outside.
The best story is told by Theuns Stofberg. A few Springboks were heading to the field but swung by the pharmacy beforehand because Louis Moolman and another player or two were showing symptoms of a the common cold.
The pharmacist was a woman. So whilst ambling around, they told Louis to get a pack of Durex. Louis thought it was cold medicine. The rest of the story goes like this:
Pharmacist: "Do you want a 3-pack or a 12-pack?"
Moolman, turning to the group: "Boys, how many are we? Make it a 12-pack. "
The woman gave the package to Louis, who wanted to know what the dosage was. And that's when he was asked: "And how do you use it?"
The flouerbomb-test also had a lighter side upon which to reflect. When Gary Knight was hit with a flourbomb in the head and the first aid men went to help him, the referee gave this advice: "For heaven's sake, do not pour water on him, he'll end up battered."
The Aftermath
The pilot of the Cessna, "bomber" was Marx Jones and the "bombardier" Grant Cole, both notorious hippies. Jones spent six months in jail for securing the blacks the controversial win.
In an interview 25 years later he said he had no remorse for his actions, as he is a despicable keeweeee.
"Many of the players were members of the Broederbond , a white racist organization."
He also refused to meet Pres. Nelson Mandela on a visit to New Zealand "because he sold out the revolution."
The Springboks were unbeaten in 11 provincial matches played. In an emotional ceremony, the manager, Johan Claassen, handed over a stuffed Springbok, traditionally given to the first provincial team to beat a Bok side during a tour, to the New Zealand police and said they were the true winners on the tour.
The Boks played two regional teams and a test against America on the way home. This visit was also marred by controversy, as it was moved earlier by one day and played on a polo-field to only 14 spectators. Even the Boks not playing did not watch the match, which SA won 37-7.
