PaarlBok
Rod McCall (65)
Before being called a gloater on this forum, i just want to paint my picture of the current Springbok team of where I think they are at the moment and where I think they will end and compare it with my past experiense of good Bok sides of yester year.
In my lifetime I lived three Springbok eras.
As a youngster I maybe grew up poor moneywise but will never forget we had a little kiddies playground in Alexander Bay, small diamond mine toen right up north west along the Orange River and close to the Namib desert. We had this playground surrounded with trees, some nice playing stuff but with a smallies rugby field with everything and even rugby poles. We'd made our own teams and one was always the Springbokke, those days we had Gerhard Viviers (Spiekeries) as a commentator and Spiekeries would climb in the tree and commentate from the top of the tree, loud. Each kid in the team would pick his own Springbok name and those days we had one hell of a Springbok team. I'll still pick that team out of my head:
HO de Villiers, Syd Nomis, Eben Olivier (the first Bok signature I got as a kid), Mannetjies Roux, Gert Brynard (his nephew was one of my pelle),Red Head Piet Visagie, WitKop Dawie de Villiers, Tommy Bedford, Jan Ellis, Piet Greyling, Frik du Preez, Tiny Naude, Hannes Marais, Gys Pitzer & Tiny Neethling. In my books that was a huge team.
As I grow up as a young man we had the 1981 class. Now that lot I do really rate , still believe they were the best Bok team I know, maybe it was the circumstances they had to play in or maybe it was just becuase I still believe they would have nicked that first WC with ease or maybe it was that during that time my beloved WP (they nick the CC 5 times in a row since 1982) & Bulls were top class teams and played our own WC due to the isolation.
Then we had the 1995 WC winning side. Never a big team on names but surely remarkable we just got back from isolation and winning the trophe in our first attempt. our country needed that one desperately and Christie and Pienaar did a fantastic job.
Why am I telling or with due respect to my Aussie friend Lee , i s harping on this. Not to gloat on our current team but to try and get you on the way that isolating Bokke classes mindset they had and try and get to the current Bok team and see the way they compare or where they are at this current moment. That Bokke did not went to NZ or Australia to win ONE away test. They went there with the mindset to win a rugby test series and in the process try and do the impossible to do a clean sweep. Thats the differense since readmission, we havent had a Bok team with this mindset. The 1995 class had the oppertunity but was knock out in 1996 with the home All Black tour.
The Bok class of 2009 is now for the first time in a position to try and rectify this. They won the WC in 2007, havent had a good 2008 TriNation tournament but since then have move on considerably. They just beat the BIL, they beat both the Wallabies and All Blacks at home but now they have to hit another nail. They have to win the 3 Nations at least before I will judge them close to the class of 1981. The current nr1 rrating is not good enough for me, I want us to stay there.
In my lifetime I lived three Springbok eras.
As a youngster I maybe grew up poor moneywise but will never forget we had a little kiddies playground in Alexander Bay, small diamond mine toen right up north west along the Orange River and close to the Namib desert. We had this playground surrounded with trees, some nice playing stuff but with a smallies rugby field with everything and even rugby poles. We'd made our own teams and one was always the Springbokke, those days we had Gerhard Viviers (Spiekeries) as a commentator and Spiekeries would climb in the tree and commentate from the top of the tree, loud. Each kid in the team would pick his own Springbok name and those days we had one hell of a Springbok team. I'll still pick that team out of my head:
HO de Villiers, Syd Nomis, Eben Olivier (the first Bok signature I got as a kid), Mannetjies Roux, Gert Brynard (his nephew was one of my pelle),Red Head Piet Visagie, WitKop Dawie de Villiers, Tommy Bedford, Jan Ellis, Piet Greyling, Frik du Preez, Tiny Naude, Hannes Marais, Gys Pitzer & Tiny Neethling. In my books that was a huge team.
As I grow up as a young man we had the 1981 class. Now that lot I do really rate , still believe they were the best Bok team I know, maybe it was the circumstances they had to play in or maybe it was just becuase I still believe they would have nicked that first WC with ease or maybe it was that during that time my beloved WP (they nick the CC 5 times in a row since 1982) & Bulls were top class teams and played our own WC due to the isolation.
Then we had the 1995 WC winning side. Never a big team on names but surely remarkable we just got back from isolation and winning the trophe in our first attempt. our country needed that one desperately and Christie and Pienaar did a fantastic job.
Why am I telling or with due respect to my Aussie friend Lee , i s harping on this. Not to gloat on our current team but to try and get you on the way that isolating Bokke classes mindset they had and try and get to the current Bok team and see the way they compare or where they are at this current moment. That Bokke did not went to NZ or Australia to win ONE away test. They went there with the mindset to win a rugby test series and in the process try and do the impossible to do a clean sweep. Thats the differense since readmission, we havent had a Bok team with this mindset. The 1995 class had the oppertunity but was knock out in 1996 with the home All Black tour.
The Bok class of 2009 is now for the first time in a position to try and rectify this. They won the WC in 2007, havent had a good 2008 TriNation tournament but since then have move on considerably. They just beat the BIL, they beat both the Wallabies and All Blacks at home but now they have to hit another nail. They have to win the 3 Nations at least before I will judge them close to the class of 1981. The current nr1 rrating is not good enough for me, I want us to stay there.
