Scandal-riddled season taints rugby
This was the year of hope and gory for South African rugby, when so much was promised but little realised as it ended in a bloody, mangled mess.
The scandals, power struggles, resignations, pay-outs, failures, discoveries, recriminations, retirements and more false dawns than seen in a theatre play run over a thousand nights.
But apart from the deceptions, lies, cover-ups, paranoia and finger-pointing, there was the glimmer of hope and the sweetness of success from the under-19s at the IRB/Fira-AER World Cup in France, and the solid performance by the under-21s in their World Cup in England.
There was the scattering of young players who pulled on the Springbok jersey, plus the return of others from injury, to hint that the future for South African rugby could indeed be bright if only the men who control the power at SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd and the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) would only stop wearing shades.
There was the return of Joe van Niekerk from injury, only for him to succumb to more injury; Schalk Burger junior was a revelation as was Derick Hougaard, John Mametsa, Richard Bands, Marius Schoeman, Solly Tyibilika, Paul Delport, Christo Bezuidenhout, Jaque Fourie, Juan Smith and Fourie du Preez.
But no one came close to Ashwin Willemse.
His past aside (and the recent "exclusive" revelations about his gangster background printed in a sports magazine last month were run in The Sunday Independent during the Super 12 season), Willemse has not lost face nor smile nor form whether playing for the Cats or the Springboks.
His smile after scoring against Samoa at the Suncorp Stadium told of a man who has found his place in rugby.
He won the SA Rugby Player of the Year, Most Promising Player of the Year and the Players' Player of the Year.
He can't be too bad then.
He said that the only person that he feared was himself.
The rest of the world is beginning to fear him.
At the end of the year, it looked as though the shades that had been worn by the previous administration and their coach had been cast off.
Silas Nkanunu finally resigned after years of being a figure of some ridicule, prompted to do so by the departure of Rian Oberholzer the day before.
Oberholzer's departure was a loss to South Africa rugby, but was, perhaps, a necessary one after the debacle of the World Cup.
Oberholzer was a strong administrator and fought hard to bring about transformation in South African rugby.
He pushed hard for development and it was he who brought in the quota system.
He was well respected in International Rugby Board circles and was an instrumental man in the Sanzar set-up.
But then there was the worry that he was becoming a pale imitation of his former father-in-law, Louis Luyt.
Some believed that he ran South African rugby by himself and ran rough-shod over the influence of the provinces, which in itself is not a bad thing.
But one man was never going to be allowed to wield too much power in rugby for too long.
He made three major mistakes.
Firstly, he got rid of Nick Mallett; secondly, he appointed Rudolf Straeuli despite being told by Andre Markgraaff that Straeuli did not have the know-how to do the job and thirdly, he backed Straeuli after the Springboks fell into a deep, dark pit at the World Cup.
He admitted just before he resigned that he could be "arrogant", but arrogance, just like ignorance, is no excuse for doing silly things.
Oberholzer got caught up in the very South African thing of going into each season full of renewed vigour and hope.
He believed that Straeuli could overcome his technical flaws and perhaps inspire the Springboks to a World Cup performance that would lift the worth of the Springbok brand in the eyes of the public and, more importantly, in the minds of the sponsors, who had begun to grumble about the return they were getting on their investment.
The Super 12 had shown that South Africa were going to have a difficult year.
Rudi Joubert took the Bulls close to the semifinals, thanks to the boot of Louis Koen.
But the Sharks and Cats finished second-last and last respectively, while the Stormers were too inconsistent and ended fourth from bottom.
The Bulls had a quite outstanding tight five, one that would form the core of the Springbok scrum.
Gert Smal's Stormers had a spate of injuries and silly losses that hampered their season, while Tim Lane's young Cats showed some sublime skills on attack.
But their defence was full of holes.
The Sharks simply failed to fire all season and Kevin Putt was the least happy of the four coaches.
The international season loomed and the signs were not good at all.
Straeuli had flattered to deceive in the Tri-nations in 2002.
Whether by accident or design, his team had played an exciting brand of running rugby that former Wales and British Lions wing Gerald Davies was in raptures about.
He believed that Straeuli had rediscovered the secret of playing simple rugby.
Let the donkeys, the forwards, do the work to create good ball for the speedy backs to work with.
More of the same was expected from 2003 and journalists were impressed with the meticulous planning for the World Cup that Straeuli showed them at a meeting in Cape Town.
Every player's game time was charted, as were the number of penalties he had conceded and points he had scored.
Training programmes, including periods of "active rest" were set out for the Springbok squad and they said that they would be improving their media relations in the lead-up to the competition.
There was no sign of a four-day survival camp on the list, as far as I could see, but perhaps that was what "active rest" meant.
The Springbok season began badly and gradually got worse.
Three of Straeuli's four captains were injured, as were Andre Pretorius and Werner Greff and Joost van der Westhuizen was captain until Corne Krige returned against Argentina.
Scotland held the lead in the first Test until eight minutes from time, when Trevor Halstead's try put the Boks ahead.
Scotland attacked them furiously and should have won, but South Africa held on to win 29-25.
The Springboks were similarly poor in the second Test, but engineered a 28-19 win against the Scots to take the series 2-0.
Louis Koen's boot saved them against Argentina with a last-minute kick for a 26-25 win over the Pumas and the Bok management began making noises about "a win is a win".
Indeed, but not, many said, against Scotland and Argentina, it's not and the Springboks knew it.
A change came over the Springboks after the criticism rained down on them.
Led by their coach they headed for the laager and treated the media with disdain.
Straeuli and, surprisingly for a man usually so genial, Krige, gave short, sarcastic answers at the press conference leading up to the first Tri-nations Test at Newlands.
The South African media received short shrift and the Australians were almost castigated for asking questions about "pressure".
They won the Test thanks to an injury to Jaco van der Westhuyzen in the first minute of the game, forcing Straeuli to bring on Brent Russell.
The little Sharks flyer set up one of the best Springbok tries of all time, fielding a Wendell Sailor kick and belting across the width of the field across the face of the Australian defence before the ball was given to Victor Matfield to score. After the game, Krige and Straeuli put on their best surly faces for the media, saying that they had believed in themselves, even if the rest of us hadn't.
"Us against them": it was to become a common theme.
They obviously didn't believe in themselves the next week when they were thumped by the All Blacks at Loftus, nor when they went to Brisbane, where they lost and were labelled as a "disgrace" by Wallabies coach Eddie Jones.
Bakkies Botha was accused of biting Brendan Cannon and Robbie Kempson, brought back from Ulster, was tagged for hitting Toutai Kefu late.
The Springboks fought back, with manager Gideon Sam having a go at Jones and the Wallabies.
It was a quite clumsy attempt to lessen the ban that Botha and Kempson deserved.
Botha was done for "attacking the face" of Cannon and banned for eight weeks, while Kempson received a lesser ban, but one long enough to force his international retirement.
The next week again lifted the hearts of Springbok fans, as the South Africans found their self-belief, thanks to the unstoppable Richard Bands who slapped Carlos Spencer away to score a try against the All Blacks in Dunedin.
It was labelled as an honourable defeat, which was indeed a dishonourable thing to say if you were involved with the Springboks.
Back home the Absa Currie Cup continued on regardless, with Heyneke Meyer's Blue Bulls beating the Sharks at home in the final.
Meyer had welcomed back Derick Hougaard, given him the number 10 jersey and told him to simply get on with it.
He did in the most startling way.
He kicked with Wilkinson-like accuracy, got his line moving and tackled well above his fighting weight.
The Bulls were missing their tight five and some of their backline, who were with the Boks.
But they knocked up result after result in the new strength versus strength Currie Cup.
The new system, with eight teams, was a success, with crowd attendances up and the standard of play good enough to keep the fans coming in week after week.
The Lions had started well, but supplying as many as nine players to the Springbok cause, plus the injury to Andre Pretorius, caused them to stutter in the important games.
They finished fourth, behind third-placed Western Province, who were another team to impress.
Carel du Plessis injected a bit of flair into Province.
But they blew hot and cold throughout the season, which was no better demonstrated by their early-season 64-29 loss to the Bulls and then their 63-26 win at Newlands.
But the Currie Cup was a mere sideshow to the World Cup.
England won because England wanted to win it the most.
The rest, especially South Africa, just hoped that they could win it.
England were too professional, too structured, too focused for there to have been any other result.
They had their frights along the way. South Africa had them gasping for air in Perth, Samoa bashed them around in Melbourne and Wales outtackled and outran them in Brisbane. They had to win the tournament the hard way and did it with style.
Much has been written about the Springboks at the World Cup, but, in truth, they never recovered from Geogate, never mind the slew in midfield injuries that they suffered.
Straeuli attempted to play mind games through the media, which would have been fun if he had also seen the funny side of it.
Straeuli felt the pressure and did not see the funny side of everything, as this writer found out in Perth when playing the fool.
The team was run under a cloud of paranoia.
Straeuli had a secretary with him, whose sole task, it seemed, was to scour the Internet to see what South African journalists on tour had written about him.
His security advisor rarely left his side and even once checked out Freddy's, the late-night hamburger bar around the corner from the team hotel in Fremantle, to see if it was safe for the coach to speak to a few journalists at 2am.
A piece I wrote about the great improbables at the World Cup was interpreted as "trying to divide the coach and the captain", and caused a one-on-one session to be cancelled and the team announcement to be brought forward by a day.
The Springboks were playing on adrenaline more than planning, which was shown when they threw the game plan out the window in the quarterfinal against the All Blacks and lost.
Geogate was the defining moment of the year for South African rugby. Now that the inquiry into it has been taken in-house, we may never know what really happened between Quinton Davids nor Geo Cronje.
Transparency has never been a strong point of South African rugby, and, under Brian van Rooyen, nothing much seems to have changed.
What Geogate did was expose the lingering and festering wounds of racism that still blemish South African rugby to such a horrific extent.
Black and white players, fans and administrators, English and Afrikaans media were split asunder by the scandal.
It was nasty, but it was always something that was going to happen.
Racism is rife in South African rugby.
Anyone who tells you different is telling horrid fibs.
What we have learned is that the players went to Kamp Staaldraad to bond and, presumably, forget about Geogate.
They got together at the end of the camp and were told that they would present one story to the media, whether that be right or wrong.
That brought on the infamous session, where the media were ushered one at a time into an auditorium at the Tukkies High Performance Centre to face all of the World Cup squad.
Krige taped each session so that none of them would be misquoted.
Paranoia city, man.
They were in trouble then, the World Cup was already gone and they knew it, but none, especially not the out-numbered black players, were going to say anything about it.
But ain't that the way things always are in South African rugby?
Shut your mouth or you will get dropped. Keep quiet, be a black player and you will be picked.
For God's sake, don't mention the racism.
In fact, the only time that anyone makes a noise in South African rugby is when they have nothing to lose. Having said that, I do make honourable exceptions for Piet Heymans and Hennie le Roux at Sarpa, Schalk Burger (senior) and, now, Morne du Plessis, who has succumbed to years of pleas to become involved in the sport at a higher level.
Van Rooyen began with such good intentions, but has quickly fallen into the trap of believing his own press.
He and the board of SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd made a mess of their first meeting and statement with the announcement of the candidates for Springbok coach.
Maybe one of the three left is a worthy candidate, the other two are at least two years away from being ready.
The mistakes made with Straeuli are merely being repeated and that cannot be allowed to happen again.
Next year, 2004, is a leap year.
South African rugby needs to make leaps in the right direction if they are to begin again.