The Greatest Springbok Teams: Past to Present, by Adam Hathaway

The Greatest Springbok Teams: Past to Present, by Adam Hathaway. Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa. Imprint: Zebra Press. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781770227415 / ISBN 978-1-77022-741-5

The Greatest Springbok Teams: Past to Present by Adam Hathaway celebrates the Springbok rugby teams that really knew how to pump the air into our rugby lungs.

Introduction

Anyone who has been to Ellis Park or any of the other great rugby cathedrals in South Africa on game day will know what the Springboks and rugby mean to the people of this country. Anyone who has crowded around a television in a bar, sometimes in the middle of the night, to watch a game, will know what rugby means to this country. Anyone who has a watched a schoolboy match will know what rugby means to this country And anyone who has seen the awe on the faces of youngsters as the Springboks get off the team coach and head into a stadium will know what rugby means to this country. In September 2014 Cobus Reinach, the scrumhalf from the Sharks, became the 864th man to play a Test for South Africa when he ran out at Newlands as second-half replacement against Australia. He was only on the pitch for a few minutes but once a Springbok, always a Springbok. If you consider that Ben Duff was one of the players in the XV to play in an official Test back in 1891 when South Africa played Britain, also in Cape Town, that works out as an average of around seven new players every year. This figure proves just how hard it is to win a Springbok jersey and that is why it means so much to the players who get to wear it and to the fans who cheer them on. That explains why someone like the great Victor Matfield, who had achieved everything there is to be achieved in the game, came out of international retirement to wear the green and gold again. It might also explain why the equally great Jean de Villiers was able to bounce back from shattering injuries to win more than 100 caps. And those men, from Duff all the way through to the modern-day Springboks, are just as special as the shirt they wear in the Test arena. The New Zealanders have their All Blacks, and a nationwide passion for the game, but even their Rugby World Cup wins did not have the significance of the South African triumph in 1995 - at their first attempt - which shone a light on an entire nation. When the whistle blew at the end of the final, with South Africa the 15-12 winner, one leading administrator commented that "things would never be the same again". He was right, and when Nelson Mandela arrived on the pitch with a Springbok number 6 jersey on his back it healed some of the wounds of the previous centuries. Debates rage about the best South African teams ever. The 1937 vintage, led by Flip Nel, gets a lot of votes in bar-room chats when these things are discussed. And with good reason. Nel, Boy Louw, Gerry Brand, Danie Craven and the rest played 29 matches, with five Tests, on the road between 31 May 1937 and 29 September 1937 and won 27, including four of the internationals. The Greatest Springbok Teams: Past to Present by Adam Hathaway spans teams from 1924 to today, then looks at what happened to that team and its players. From the players of old who went to fight in the World Wars, to legends like Craven who became the father of our game, to the modern players who moved into business, medicine or to become TV pundits and those who have had bigger battles off the field against crippling diseases.

Adam Hathaway, December 2014 

This is an excerpt from The Greatest Springbok Teams: Past to Present, by Adam Hathaway.

Title: The Greatest Springbok Teams
Subtitle: Past to Present
Author: Adam Hathaway
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Zebra Press
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781770227415 / ISBN 978-1-77022-741-5
Softcover, 17 x 23 cm, 256 pages, several b/w and colour photographs