Marching With the Braai Army
On Sport and Social Relations
Written at the vertigo-inducing top of Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth during the Women’s Springbok match against Canada and before the Springbok Men face off against Italy.
I met Danie Gerber last night. For most of you that will mean very, very little, but if you are a rugby fan or historian, and in particular if you are a South African and a Springbok fan you recognize Gerber as one of the all-time legends, a centre with one of the highest score-trying rates in history, having touched down in 79% of the matches he played for the Boks. Now, the historian in me has to insert a giant caveat — Gerber played in the 80s and early 90s, with most of his career overlapping with the time when the Boks were a pariah in world rugby, and both because of isolation and because national teams played far fewer tests in the 80s, so I think his career and his place on the all-time rankings carries with it an asterisk. But ask South Africans of a certain age about the all-time Springboks and they will raise Gerber’s name. His career ended five-years before I ever arrived on these shores so I can’t speak to having seen him play other than grainy highlights, but people whose opinions on rugby I value insist that he was an all-timer, and he was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame, which would seem to validate the acclaim.
I met Gerber because he was a speaker at an event put together by a Port Elizabeth-based group called the “Braai Army,” which effectively brings people together around rugby matches and especially Springbok tests. I met the main organizer and founder of the Braai Army last year in Pretoria, ran into him and a couple of his fellow members at the same hotel last week, and they enlisted me into the Braai Army as an honorary member. The event last night was at a Rugby Club in PE and it was about as Afrikaans a night as I have had in ages. Boerewors rolls, rugby fans, lots of Brandy and Coke being downed (I stuck with Windhoek Lager) and the highlight, Gerber doing a Q&A. They also had some local coaches and a high school player who is the captain of a team heading to Europe to represent South Africa later in the year and for whom much of last night was a fundraiser.
Rugby lends itself to these kinds of social events. At Rhodes I learned about the post-match drinks sessions with the opposing team. You beat the hell out of one another for 80 minutes and then you gather in the rugby club bar and tell lies and get to know one another and celebrate deep into the night. Awards are given, fines and punishments are levied. Man of the Match is announced. Mare of the Match soon follows, which goes to someone who makes the most boneheaded, funny, or ridiculous play or plays of the day. I never won the former. I did win the latter once for passing the ball to a teammate rather than score a sure try. My coaches wanted more selfishness in a game we won by about 50 (a rarity for Rhodes) and it was all in good fun. Well, sort of. Mostly. The head coach of the Rhodes rugby program did call me “Die fokken American.” Rest in Peace, Frans Erasmus.
The Braai Army is of a piece with this. Most, but not all, are serious rugby fans and many are current or former players. They had a whole weekend of activities planned, and last night’s meet-up was spun off into an afterparty for a few of us. Today they are gathering at that same club and will be doing Park and Ride and enjoying the match and, I’m guessing, downing lots more drinks. I came over to the stadium early for the women’s match and because I was driving in and needed to deal with parking I knew that I needed to give myself loads of time. As it was, going to the right lot for my parking permit and then getting in and finding the media centre took the better part of an hour-and-a-half. I’ll be driving back to Grahamstown tonight (once I get out of the traffic morass it will be about a 90-minute drive) so I won’t be doing any more with the Braai Army on this weekend, though they will be going well into the small hours tomorrow morning I am sure and I bet I see them again, here in PE or up in Pretoria next year or possibly at Ellis Park in August.
As for today’s matches, it seems as if the Springbok women are growing up before our eyes. They lost to Canada 66-7 last year, 50-20 last week when they actually outscored the #2 team in the world in the second half. And now, with about a half hour left of play, the Canadans are holding on to a 14-5 lead and the Bok women look feisty. Canada just scored a third try and missed the conversion, so it’s now 19-5, probably too big a gap for the Springbok women to close, but they continue to show good spirit and this is a far cry from 66-7. The modest goal in this year’s World Cup is to advance out of the group stages, and there are signs that might be possible.
For the main event, the men’s match, I would imagine that it was a pretty gruelling week, or at least first half of the week, of practice as Rassie and company were decidedly not thrilled with how the Boks played, especially in the second half. Siya Kolisi is still dealing with a neck injury that was described as “mild” two weeks ago, but now he’s missing his third match in a row. he will be replaced in the captaincy by Salmon Moerat, who capained the Boks last year in Bloemfontein against Portugal. Willie Le Roux will be getting his 100th test cap tonight. He will be at fullback, the position he is most comfortable with though he can play all along the backline. there is a lot of turnover from last week’s roster, which was to be expected given how the Boks like to work combinations and establish depth for both the Rugby Championship and for the World Cup in two years. I’m going to predict a runaway, which can always look foolhardy when you’re talking about Test rugby, but I see it as 58-10 for the men in green and gold.