False Bay league wins in two eras show how rugby has changed

Rugby history repeated itself this month, but also showed how the game has changed — from those who play it to those who love and watch it, and to those who legislate it.

On September 30 1972 — a fine spring Saturday — False Bay RFC won Western Province’s Grand Challenge. Last Saturday they won it again, defeating Durbanville 25-15 in the final. This Friday night the club will celebrate its latest victory and the one from the exact date of 50 years ago, and there will be toasts to absent friends; not everyone from that victorious team is still around.

In an age of live TV, the Grand Challenge, once regarded the holy grail of rugby at a proletarian level, has lost some of its appeal but the main stand was packed for last Saturday’s final and this Friday, at the club dinner, the bitter malt will taste just sweet as it did in 1972 — and a lot of it will flow.

Much else has changed. New rules have stifled much of rugby’s creativity and none of those on the team sheets of this year’s final were even twinkles in any eye in 1972. Durbanville, a team from a rustic suburban outpost, were still languishing in the reserve leagues.

Newlands, the venue in 1972, is now in the condemned cell, awaiting the executioner’s wrecking ball. Last Saturday, in one of those ironic twists of history, the final was played in a stadium that had not even been planned, let alone built, 50 years ago. It is named after Danie Craven, the Svengali of Stellenbosch, who would have resented the absence of his beloved Maties.

When Craven still ruled SA rugby, False Bay was a club that operated on the fringes of Cape Town’s Anglo-Saxon heartland and often out of a spotlight dominated by the glamour of Villagers, Hamiltons and Maties (Stellenbosch University), the three oldest clubs in SA rugby.

In 1972 a try had just been promoted to four points and the rolling maul was either nonexistent or non grata. Scrumhalves were penalised for putting the ball under their hookers’ feet. Heels against the head were a skill, now they are a lost art. Head-high tackles were often overlooked and red or yellow cards were used to test colour-blindness.

The game at all venues were segregated, so it was especially poignant that the semifinals two weeks ago were played at City Park, a ground once assigned for coloured people only in terms of apartheid’s Group Areas Act.

The contrast of Newlands from 50 years ago and venues now was obvious on and off the field. Earlier this month during the World Sevens tournament played at the Cape Town Stadium in Green Point there were giant TV screens, loud music, fireworks and floodlights. Fifty years ago the only light was in the press box. There was no TV, no cellphones for selfies, or replica shirts. If you wore the jersey that day, it meant you were playing.

Unlike the sevens tournament, to which teams worldwide had been invited, the ones from 1972 were all local, if you counted the Maties, who were often treated as foreign interlopers by the parochial Newlands crowd, possibly because they won there so often and so regularly. Well, they didn’t win in 1972 when it counted.

A month before the final day of the ’72 season, the Maties were held 3-3 by False Bay at Newlands in pouring rain. It was crucial because if you can’t beat the Maties, at least hold them to a draw. That outcome, with victories over Villagers (26-9, convincingly, according to The Argus) and UCT (32-21, a “shock”, according to the Cape Times) opened the way for the Bay to go into the final match of the season needing to beat Police to claim the Grand Challenge Cup for the first time in their then 43-year existence.

Everything exciting

In his reminiscences of that time, the Bay’s legendary coach Basil Bey, an intensely private man, shared his thoughts on the players, comparing them to King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. He also touched on what inspired them: in that tight game against Stellenbosch, during a passage of play that the press might have described as “dour”, Des Newton, playing at centre for the Bay, turned to flyhalf Richard Nurse and said: “Isn’t this exciting!”

It was a remark that reflected the attitude of the players in that team. Everything was exciting and the excitement of a season built to a crescendo on September 30. And the crowd bought into that excitement.

The Newlands fans were a discerning bunch. They didn’t get excited easily, many of them steeped in the culture of a venue that had produced so much excitement over the years. They understood the difference between good rugby and a dreadful version. They appreciated the drama of rugby: from club matches to provincial games (where petty jealousies were put aside and players like Jannie Engelbrecht, who had been mocked as Die Aap van Koekenaap when he wore the maroon of Maties, was cheered in the blue-and-white hoops of Western Province), to the game played at the Olympian level in Test matches.

Of all those tiers of rugby, club games promised a feast: five matches on a single afternoon. Often Newlands would have crowds of about 15,000 — perhaps even more — for such games. There was also so much talent on display that the matches often served as Western Province trials: a good performance on the day might earn a nod from the selectors that night.

There was atmosphere too, not least in the Bomb Shelter, the bar below the main grandstand where extra barmen needed to be hired to accommodate a crowd that was always thirsty and impatient.

Such was the scene 50 years ago. By the time False Bay and Police ran out for the main game, the outcome of the Grand Challenge was not settled. The Maties, inevitably, were still in contention. If the Bay lost, the title would again head to Stellenbosch, who would share it if the Bay drew.

Police, though not in the running, had shown themselves to be formidable opponents, losing just twice — once against UCT and against Stellenbosch in injury time. Chris Burger, who would die a day after breaking his neck in a game for WP against Free State in 1980, was Police’s points machine; in the centre was a devastating runner, Johan Oosthuizen, who would form a formidable Springbok midfield with Peter Whipp against the All Blacks four years later; and there was a versatile forward called Cliffie Etzebeth, who could play loose or tighthead, lock or flank, and was a prototype for his yet-to-be-born nephew Eben.

Bay heroes

Even for those who were not natural False Bay fans (especially the Villager and Hamiltons diehards), there was a sense of destiny in the air. Perhaps it was old Cape Town antipathy towards Stellenbosch or just the hope that someone — anyone — other than the mighty Maties would prevail. It was part of the excitement.

In the end it seemed everyone embraced False Bay’s 37-18 victory. The outcome was clear almost as soon as it started: early tries, goal kicks — including a drop-goal from 45m — snuffed out any chance of a Police victory. The names of the Bay heroes still roll off the tongue even after so many years: a core of tight forwards in Gus Enderstein, Mike English, Tim Hamilton-Smith, Jumbo Anderson, Clive Jordaan, backed up by a superb loose trio of Denzil le Roux, John le Roux and Dave McGregor; the halfbacks Dave Allen and Nurse, the threequarters, Newton, Butch Watson-Smith (the captain), the prolific try-scorers Frans Oeschger and Jeff Ilsey on the wings and fullback Otto Jaekel.

Jaekel so often won games with his unerring boot that local newspapers fell over themselves to headline Bay victory reports as “Day of the Jaekel”, a play on Frederick Forsyth’s best-selling novel of the time, Day of the Jackal.

In the stands, a hardened False Bay man who had played for the club in his youth and served it in many capacities afterwards, seemed to have waited all his life for this victory. Jack Horn, a tough old rugger-bugger if ever there was one, wept openly. No-one dared to laugh.