THIS evening at Ellis Park marks the 108th chapter in the great rivalry between the Springboks and the All Blacks. Mike Greenaway delves into the special history the rugby-mad countries share.
On the morning of the 1995 World Cup final, Sean Fitzpatrick woke up to see a hoard of South African supporters outside the All Black hotel chanting their support for the Springboks. Some brandished dolls of blockbuster wing Jonah Lomu hanging from a noose.
The legendary captain said that he had a sinking feeling as the All Black bus closed in on Ellis Park, the spiritual home of South African rugby.
“I felt there was something bigger than rugby gripping South Africa,” Fitzpatrick said. “You could sense the desperation as the fans spat at our bus and hammered on the sides. And when I later saw Nelson Mandela in Francois Pienaar’s No 6 jersey, it felt like we were being set up.”
The 15-12 win in extra time, courtesy of a dream drop goal by Joel Stransky, is arguably the most special moment in Springbok history, with respect to the triumphs in 2007, 2019 and 2023. The 1995 Webb Ellis Cup win was the first, it was unexpected, and it was just a year after South Africa’s first free elections.
As Fitzpatrick said: “We were shattered at the final whistle. It was horrible. You didn’t know what to do. Later, we felt privileged to have been part of something special. This World Cup was a major step in unifying a country divided for so long.”
To give you an idea of how annoyed New Zealanders were to lose that final let me retell the story the Scotland centre John Leslie told at the 1999 World Cup. Leslie was one of the “kilted Kiwis” that Scotland recruited for that World Cup
Leslie had watched the ’95 final at home in Dunedin and afterward he went outside for some fresh air. He noticed a fire in his neighbour’s garden. The fellow was so incensed that he poured petrol on his television and set it on fire.
I wonder how many Kiwis felt the same way in 2023 when those damned Boks thwarted the All Blacks in another final?
Nearly all of the All Blacks team that played in the 12-11 defeat at the Stade de France will be in action this evening at Ellis Park and it is impossible for them to not have revenge uppermost in their minds.
In between the 1995 and 2023 finals, the drama between the Old Foes has ebbed and flowed and it is thanks to the Springbok revival engineered by Rassie Erasmus in 2018 that the rivalry is back to its fiercest.
The rivalry was born in 1921 in frosty Dunedin, in the deep south of New Zealand, and was at its closest in terms of results in the 75 years of the amateur era, and has been seriously tested in a post-1995 modern era that has seen New Zealand dominate world rugby.
There was a bleak period between 2001 and 2004 when the All Blacks beat the Boks in eight consecutive matches. And the Kiwis won six on the trot from 2015 to 2017.
But over the last five years, the Kiwi dominance has declined and since 2018 the tightness of the matches has had South African hearts aflutter and New Zealanders welcoming back a genuine challenge to their dominance.
In 2018, with Erasmus at the helm for the Boks, the teams perfectly cancelled each other out with a home and away aggregate score of 66-66 following the 36-34 Bok win in Wellington and the 32-30 All Blacks victory in Pretoria; while the previous encounter between the sides had seen the visiting Kiwis squeak home 25-24 in Cape Town.
In 2019, the teams drew 16-16 in Wellington and then in the World Cup, while the All Blacks beat the Boks in a tense pool match, it was the South Africans that went on to win the Webb Ellis Cup.
This nip and tuck of recent matches has been celebrated by rugby purists in both countries who had lamented the alarming discrepancy between the sides in 2016 and 2017 when the All Blacks ruthlessly won 41-13, 57-15, and 57-0.
But let’s digress from the Boks’ erratic performances against New Zealand in the professional era and examine just why these two countries have this exclusive and mutually sentimental need to beat each other more than the other nations.
Over three-quarters of a century of amateur rugby, during which the two countries dominated world rugby, the Springboks had a superior record to the All Blacks.
Up until the first post-isolation Test in 1992, the Springboks had won 20 Tests against the All Blacks, the latter had won 15, and two matches had been drawn.
The Boks had won a series in New Zealand (1937) but the All Blacks had never won a series on South African soil. As the rivalry progressed into the post-World War Two era, the Boks defeated the All Blacks eight times in a row, and nine times out of 10, including the famous “All Blacked out” series of 1949 in South Africa in which the Kiwis were humbled in four Tests.
The Kiwis responded with a 2-1 home series win in 1956; the Boks reciprocated with a 2-1 win at home in 1960; the All Blacks then won 3-1 in New Zealand in 1965 only to be overturned 3-1 in South Africa in 1970.
South Africa again won 3-1 in South Africa in 1976 only to lose 2-1 in New Zealand in 1981 in an incredibly dramatic tour that divided New Zealanders on the issue of “sports versus politics”.
Whatever your stance, that tour strikingly entrenched the colourful relationship between the two rugby-mad countries.
In 1986, a rebel All Blacks Cavaliers side (missing two conscientious objectors in John Kirwan and David Kirk), lost a series in South Africa that again had New Zealanders, on the one hand, demonising apartheid but with another tuning the TV remote into the riveting rugby.
In 1996, the All Blacks avenged the ’95 final defeat in the most emphatic matter when they at last won a series in South Africa. The scene was Loftus Versfeld and the New Zealanders had sneaked home to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in a series they would win 2-1.
In the press box that day, I saw usually stony-faced Kiwi scribes weep with emotion, as did Sean Fitzpatrick and his men. The Loftus pitch was littered with All Blacks lying prone on their backs, staring to the heavens with delight.
That is what it meant to New Zealand to at last win a series in South Africa.