1996 revisited: All Blacks focused, Boks distracted

The All Blacks came to South Africa in 1996 seeking revenge and left with a historic series victory amid one of the most turbulent years in Springbok history, writes GAVIN RICH in SA Rugby magazine.

When the All Blacks arrived in South Africa in 1996 the Springboks hadn’t played a home series against them in 20 years – the last meeting between the teams on South African soil being the 1976 rubber which was edged 3-1 by Morné du Plessis’ side amidst much rancour and controversy over refereeing decisions.

Complaining about the refereeing had been a common theme for New Zealanders throughout the history of combat between the two Greatest Rivalry nations, but neutral referees had become the norm by then and when Sean Fitzpatrick’s team arrived it was also the start of the professional era.

Referees were less of a talking point in 1996, but the teething problems associated with the onset of professionalism was a backdrop that had a big influence behind the scenes. More so for South Africa than New Zealand, and it played a role in determining how the series played out.

So undeniably did the cacophonous off-field noise created by a combination of off-field factors, not least of them the tone-deafness of both the Springbok management and the South African administration to the spirit of nation building that had driven the ‘One Team, One Country’ of the 1995 World Cup-winning year.

In contrast to what by then was a fragmented Bok group and SA rugby politik, the All Blacks arrived unified and with a singularity of purpose. They essentially had two missions, the first being to become the first All Blacks team to win a series in South Africa, the second being to avenge the defeat to the Boks in the previous year’s historic World Cup final in Johannesburg.

The hunger for that second aspect was much in evidence when I headed to New Zealand to cover the first-ever Tri-Nations game in Wellington, a week ahead of the Bok arrival in Australia. On the way into the old Athletic Park Stadium, where the All Blacks and Jonah Lomu in particular sounded a loud warning to the rest of the world with a thumping 43-6 wet-weather victory over the Wallabies, there was much bitter talk and criticism of South Africa as a country from those Kiwis drawn into a conversation.

“How can you live in a country where it is not safe to stop at a traffic light?” That was one comment that I remember.

I also well remember the celebrations of the All Blacks players and their supporters in Christchurch a few weeks later when the home team beat the Boks in a tightly contested and bruising game that was really lost by the indiscipline of the Boks. It was the game where Bok hooker John Allan head-butted Fitzpatrick at the first scrum, and then wing Pieter Hendriks gave away a poor off-the-ball penalty just as the Boks looked like they might threaten a narrow New Zealand lead.

But that game was not part of the series to come on South African soil, and neither was the one that followed in Cape Town a few weeks later. They were both Tri-Nations games, played separately to the series, which began in Durban, by which stage the tone had been set.

Newlands turned out to be the last game 1995 World Cup-winning captain Francois Pienaar played for his country. He was injured during the game but coach André Markgraaff, who had taken over from the ailing Kitch Christie during the off-season, had a different view, as he told me in my book on the Springbok coaches, The Poisoned Chalice.

“I never said it publicly at the time because I felt I couldn’t, but I would have said it to my

best friends, my family and people close to me, and I still say it today that he faked the injury,” said Markgraaff.

According to Markgraaff, Pienaar phoned him on the Sunday night and apologised for what had happened, but then the next day when the Boks gathered at the team hotel in Umhlanga Rocks at the start of the buildup to the first Test of the series at Kings Park, he was informed by the team doctor, Frans Verster, that Pienaar had told him his GP had booked him off for six weeks.

Pienaar therefore missed the series entirely, and was then dropped by Markgraaff ahead of the end-of-year tour to Argentina and Europe. Gary Teichmann replaced him in the series and was to become the established leader before one of Markgraaff’s successors as coach, Nick Mallett, dropped him in the buildup to the 1999 World Cup.

According to Markgraaff, had he been true to himself, he would have chosen Teichmann as his captain at the start of 1996, but he knew what a huge backlash that would have caused as Pienaar was a World Cup-winning captain and a national hero. Markgraaff was convinced, though, that rugby had changed since the World Cup, driven by adaptations during that season’s Super 12, where it was Natal, and not the Bok-laden Transvaal team, that were by far the best South African side.

There was a perception that during the course of that year Markgraaff systematically broke

up a World Cup-winning team, but it is not entirely accurate.

There were a lot of injuries, plus players who’d been good in 1995 had gone beyond the pinnacle of their careers, and that theory is backed up by the decline of the Transvaal side that had the bulk of the World Cup Boks playing for them.

It was also a year where, after the heady nation-building successes of the World Cup season – driven by the then Sarfu CEO Edward Griffiths and with Du Plessis, the 1976 captain, as a statesmanlike driving force and political commissar in his role as team manager – the Boks rediscovered their old habit of conspiring against themselves.

By the start of the 1996 season Griffiths had been unceremoniously axed by a fax sent by Sarfu president Louis Luyt, and with both Griffiths and Christie gone, Du Plessis’ role within the group was diminished in importance. It set the tone for a politically disastrous year.

First there was the controversy that followed Du Plessis’ plea after the Tri-Nations game against Australia in Bloemfontein that preceded the four successive weeks of games against the All Blacks to fans not to bring the old South African flag to stadiums.

There was a backlash from sections of the public and Du Plessis wasn’t helped by skipper Pienaar distancing himself from his comments. It led to a bizarre press conference on the eve of the Cape Town Test where the Bok media liaison Alex Broun made it clear that Du Plessis, when he doubled down on his flag comments, wasn’t speaking on behalf of the team.

Broun was an Australian and completely naive to the sensitive South African political dynamic, remembering too that all of this was happening just two years after the country’s first democratic election. The country only had one national flag, and Du Plessis was completely correct to point that out, and Pienaar and Sarfu wrong to distance themselves from his comments.

One senior official told me at a function in the buildup to the first Test that Sarfu had done that for risk of alienating their ‘target market’, but what was their target market as the national team? The old flag was a hated symbol for the majority of the population, and the fragmentation of the ‘One Team, One Country’ ethos was further undermined when Markgraaff selected Henry Tromp, a Northern Transvaal hooker who’d spent time in prison after being convicted for the role he had played in the death of a farm labourer.

Understandably South Africa’s first sports minister under the democratic dispensation, Steve Tshwete, felt impelled to have his say, and he did by issuing a statement in which he said that many South Africans, ‘mostly from the black communities’, did not believe rugby had moved into the new era.

The mood also wasn’t helped by one of many furores that erupted around James Small during his celebrated but often controversial career. Small was effectively cleared by a Sarfu disciplinary hearing conducted at Kings Park in the buildup to the first Test but Markgraaff was intent on punishing him for his perceived infraction – Markgraaff told me Small was out until 6am on the morning of the Tri-Nations Test in Cape Town – and thus ruled out of the series one of the few World Cup winners who was still in any kind of decent form.

After that Newlands game there was also controversy around the legendary prop Os du Randt, who went on in 2007 to become a double World Cup winner. Du Randt allegedly walked off the field during the game saying, ‘Ek is gatvol’ [I’ve had enough].’

Then there was the money issue, not reported by the media at the time, that was broiling behind the scenes and the inevitable consequence in the first year of professionalism of the Pienaar- led Bok brinkmanship following the 1995 World Cup that led to Sarfu president Louis Luyt buying his loyalty.

In brief, there was a rebel organisation similar in intent to the Kerry Packer circus that drove change in cricket but also fragmented that sport in the late 1970s, signing up players to an alternative league. As world champions the Boks were key targets of Ross Turnbull’s World Rugby Corporation, and Pienaar was involved in recruiting his teammates.

The captain was turned by Luyt’s 11th-hour offer of one cent more than the rumoured R1-million – which was a lot of money in those days – that Pienaar had been offered by the WRC. It led to all the Boks getting handsomely paid by signing up for three-year contracts that were significantly more lucrative than any newcomers in the Bok ranks would earn.

The likes of Teichmann, André Venter and Henry Honiball were on a pittance compared to World Cup Boks. Some were no longer even part of the squad. It led to several behind-the-scenes meetings when the players should really have been focusing on the All Blacks. Those who were there tell the story of how Markgraaff, in explaining to the players why they weren’t going to be paid what they’d asked for, was halted in mid-sentence by Honiball checking his watch.

Honiball is said to have said, “I am just checking to see how long it is before it gets dark so I can start my drive to my farm. I can’t afford to be away from my farm for the money you are offering us.”

Honiball’s recalcitrance won a battle but the war raged on for a few years after that and it did not help the results. It was against that backdrop that the 1996 series was played, and while the Boks were competitive in Durban, the All Blacks edged home 23-19 after leading 18-9 at half-time.

By the time the second Test in Pretoria arrived it was clear players from both teams were nearing levels of exhaustion and the All Blacks had to dig deep before No 8 Zinzan Brooke did the unexpected by snapping over a drop goal that put seven points between the teams in the dying minutes (33-26) to confirm a series win with one game to play.

The celebrations of the Kiwis afterwards knew no bounds and while the last dead-rubber game of the series at Ellis Park in Johannesburg was comfortably won by the Boks (32-22) in what by then had become a survival exercise, the All Blacks returned to New Zealand to a ticker-tape parade that underlined the importance of the win and what it meant to their public.

After all, they’d waited 75 years from the first meeting between the Boks and All Blacks in 1921 for their first win in South Africa.

It was sweet revenge for what happened in 1995, when the New Zealanders were the team of the tournament but bottled it in the final, although to be fair even at that embryonic stage of the World Cup era it probably was only the Kiwis who’d have equated the two achievements.

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