KEVIN MCCALLUM: Announcing the Bok squad: farce and comedy are never far away

Nigh on two decades ago, the announcement of the Springbok squad for the 2003 World Cup team began with a staged accident and ended with a whimpering exit stage right. In a ceremony described as “spectacular” at the time by one writer, a bus crashed through a fake wall at a field at Tukkies.

If it looked weird on television, it was comical, confusing and cringy to those of us actually there. The polystyrene bricks almost jumped out of the way before the bus got to them, seeming not to want to be part of an embarrassing pantomime that preceded an embarrassing crash of a Springbok World Cup campaign.

Geo Cronjé and Quinton Davids were not on the bus because of an agreement that involved the k-word. Cronjé did not want to share a “kamer” with Davids for reasons an SA Rugby investigation into alleged racism in the incident could not or would not confirm. This was despite what Corné Krige, the captain of that 2003 team, had told it.

Later, in his book The Right Place at the Wrong Time, Krige wrote that he “thought it was a weak ruling. Of course, no one was going to come out and say Geo was a racist. But from the facts I gave them and the way I phrased my answers, well, if they couldn’t make up their minds after that, perhaps they shouldn’t have been holding an inquiry in the first place.”

Perhaps the bus crash was to signify the team breaking on through to the other side, away from an utterly awful 2003 in which they were belted 52-16 by the All Blacks at Loftus and used 49 different players. If so, what was on the other side of that fake wall was a downhill slope that would lead to huge changes at SA Rugby. 

CEO Rian Oberholzer and Bok coach Rudolf Straeuli resigned. Silas Nkanunu, the president, left rugby for good. Krige announced his retirement from Tests at the beginning of 2004.

Still, the 2003 World Cup failed to not scar a group of players who would form a vital part of the team Jake White built for 2007. In 2003, John Smit made his captaincy debut against Uruguay, Ashwin Willemse was a star turn, Schalk Burger was called up thanks to the influence of Krige, Juan Smith was immense, Danie Rossouw filled the Cronjé/Davids hole, and Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha impressed, as did the ever-consistent Jaque Fourie.

I can’t remember how the Springbok team for 2007 was announced, which is a good thing. Grand announcements bring grand expectations. Neither can I recall the 2011 World Cup squad naming, save for a wonky version of the national anthem. Sports minister Fikile Mbalula — he’s all about fake walls and engineered accidents — told the Boks to “moer hulle”.

Similarly, 2015 is vague, which again is good. And so, on to 2019, and the clever, simple montage of getting a host of South Africans to announce the names, from young rugby players to school bands, David Miller, the late isiXhosa commentator Kaunda Ntunja, Wayde van Niekerk, Chad le Clos, family and friends. It was warm, touching, inclusive and it felt real.

For 2023, SA Rugby went off the rails with its announcement. A show had a capping ceremony in which the players would be called out one by one to kneel on a cushioned step in front of SA Rugby Union president Mark Alexander to receive their cap. This they did in the royal palace of the foyer of the DStv building in Randburg. 

“I was just going about my day when I suddenly remembered that our World Cup team was forced to walk out and kneel down on an athletics podium in humble gratitude while a shrimpy dude placed an ill-fitting cap on their head, and now I feel anxious again,” tweeted author Darrel Bristow-Bovey on the mess formerly known as Twitter.

Some players did not kneel, he noted, some merely refusing to do so. Some Springboks aren’t too big on taking the knee, remember.

“Wait, but we have a lot of knee injuries in the team, might be painful? No worries, get a tasselled cushion that slides around when you put your weight on it. That will be funny as well as painful,” wrote Bristow-Bovey.

While the 2023 announcement wasn’t quite the fake bus crash of 2003, it was stuttering and clunky. It felt like a staged moment to get out of the way, a forced smile of a goodbye. Instead, it should have been more fair speed, merry gentlemen, run hard and true, tackle low and fly high. A country expects.