Something refreshingly different has been quietly brewing away since Allister Coetzee took charge of the Springboks, writes Gasant Abarder.
Cape Town - I have a confession: I was never really a fan of the kind of rugby the Stormers played under Allister Coetzee. He was a pragmatic coach with reasonable success. Perhaps too pragmatic because I always felt the team went to sleep in their third quarter of a match instead of delivering the killer blow.
Besides, the rugby at Newlands wasn’t pretty all that often. Perhaps it’s because as a massive Stormers fan I grew up on a diet of Slaptjips (the name we had for Pieter Rossouw), Fleckie, Bobby and Breytie. That was a time of swashbuckling, caution-to-the-wind rugby by the manne then known as the Men in Black.
In fairness, though, Allister’s approach had better results for the Stormers than many of his predecessors. What I know about rugby is dangerous. So fortunately, this Friday Files column is less about rugby than it is about our rugby culture.
Over a little more than a fortnight, Allister has breathed new life into a battered and bruised Springbok brand. We are on the eve of witnessing something exciting as the Boks take on Ireland in Allister’s backyard of Newlands. It’s his first Test in charge. The first Test of a new Bok era.
It’s funny how we remember history. The rugby public will readily continue to send up and caricature Peter de Villiers when in the cold light of day he was a far better coach than Heyneke Meyer.
Disagree? Perhaps the single most embarrassing defeat in Bok history - that day against Japan in our Rugby World Cup group match last year - will jolt you back to reality.
Under Meyer, the Bok image was skewered and diced into sushi (or Springbok carpaccio). There was a vocal unhappiness with the lack of transformation under Meyer. We were the laughing stock of world rugby - tired, stale and fresh out of ideas.
Our rugby brand feels ambiguous and we’re a good few years behind the benchmark that is the formidable All Blacks.
But something refreshingly different has been quietly brewing away since Allister took charge.
It started on the day the players arrived for camp at Cape Town International Airport. There was no team bus waiting for them. Instead, they were surprised that the only instruction left for them was that they had to hitch-hike their way to various locations in the city.
Lionel Mapoe, Patrick Lambie, Jesse Kriel and a few others had to find their way to Mzoli’s in Gugulethu. There they donned hairnets and helped grill meat and served patrons at one of the best shisanyama places in the Cape.
Then there was the Bok training session in Belhar on Monday. It was like 1995 all over again and those legendary images of a young Francois Pienaar running through the streets of Soweto with his Bok side in tow.
It’s all a very deliberate plan by Allister to get the Boks back to basics. But his other motive is to have the public fall back in love with the Bok brand with a campaign his marketing team calls #LoveRugby.
Two weeks later, even before he has shouted an instruction in anger into one of those coach’s walkie-talkies, I’m a fan of Allister Coetzee.
“I think what is important is for our people to understand that when you represent your country, it doesn’t mean that you isolate yourself. It gives you more reason to be able to engage with people.
“What our country really needs are role models and we need role models in all the communities. I had been a teacher for 18 years and that helped a lot in the way I think and the way I engage with people.
“When we are blessed with talent, it only means something special when you use it for a good purpose, otherwise it is wasted talent. I would like to make sure that our Springboks are really seen to be role models, that our Springboks are in touch with the people out there - the people that come out and support them.
“The people that pay to come watch for years, the people that really buy the jersey and the memorabilia and support. That is to me a two-way thing: a partnership. It’s not my team, it’s our team, it’s the country’s team and they must feel the team out there.”
There is a reason why an All Blacks Test at Newlands (which no longer happens these days) feels like a home Test for the Kiwis. Sonny Bill Williams is a regular in the Bo-Kaap or the team will train at Schotsche Kloof.
Somewhere along the line, the Boks had lost that common touch. That’s why the Belhar training was so magical. And Allister plans to keep it going.
“I’m sure the more people see how much we value their support, how accessible we are and not secluded. The #LoveRugby campaign is the common denominator in the whole thing.
“How are we are doing this? We had fallen in love with the game, that’s why you are supporting it, that’s why you go watch it.
“But somewhere there has been disconnection and you have fallen out of love with it. This is the whole thing about the #LoveRugby campaign.
“We’re all rugby supporters, we’re mad about the game and it’s a massive and important nation-building thing in our country. We saw it in 1995, when we won the World Cup and beat New Zealand at Ellis Park. We can beat New Zealand at Newlands or anywhere else in South Africa, for that matter.
“I’m just pleased that this new crop of players, new management team and staff at SA Rugby have bought into this #LoveRugby campaign. It can be a powerful campaign.”
But for Allister it is more than amarketing campaign. It’s a state of mind. The players are being taken on a journey to understand what it means to be a Springbok.
It’s a move away from the traditional, stuffy image of the Springbok. It’s illustrated on the team bus where values like “Dignity”, “Respect”, “Discipline” and “Resilience” are plastered in graffiti-style writing on the body work.
“The messages on the bus - it’s part of our core values for team culture along four important principles: eat, greet, language and time.
“If you look at those principles, even when I went to Japan, the big thing for me was to be able to greet the people in Japanese. That stands out and is a sign of respect to people when you do that. Greeting is massively important.
“When you talk about being on time for meetings, being there first and being ready, the Japanese have a massive work ethic and there’s a saying there that if you’re on time, you’re late! Time, in our environment, is everything.
“With languages, we have 11 official languages in our country so I’d like every Springbok player to be comfortable in his own language - if it’s Afrikaans, Xhosa, English, just be comfortable. How do I show respect? By understanding your language and speaking the same language, that’s how I learn more about you as a person.
“Then, obviously, what we eat is important.”
Ironically, the team that humbled us as a rugby nation is the nation where Allister learnt these values - Japan.
Allister is a likeable character. Away from the game there are three people who make his face light up with an ear-to-ear smile: his wife and two daughters.
As we shoot the breeze after myallocated 15-minute interview has expired, we talk about a range of things. His favourite Japanese saying loosely translates into “Wait a minute!”
When I ask him which two guests he’d most like to have over at the Coetzee household for dinner, he says without hesitating and with a giggle: “My wife and my wife”.
And he also reveals that for “various reasons”, with almost a wink, that Halle Berry is his favourite actress. Then he quickly reassures me that Mrs Coetzee and his daughters know about it.
Somehow Allister is quiet but more confident than the man I remember seeing on TV when he coached the Stormers.
I may be wrong - and I hope I am now that I’m a fan - about his approach to rugby after such a long break from the South African game.
He has a new perspective. I suspect I may be pleasantly surprised with what the Boks serve up against Ireland at Newlands tomorrow.
“Japan helped me a lot and in many ways. I saw things from the outside because once you’re inside the South African context, you only see it through the South African perspective. I suppose, because so much is happening in our country, it’s really one of the reason we’re falling out of love with rugby because we’re worried about poverty, unemployment and a lot of other things.
“Just looking at it from the outside I got perspective on a few things. In many ways it has been a good thing for me. I also had that break, I wasn’t attached to a franchise, where people say 'oh, you’re going to a Springbok coach, you’re going to favour your franchise'.
“There was a bit of a disconnection which for me was the right thing at the right time. I’m grateful for that.”
* Gasant Abarder is the editor of the Cape Argus.
Cape Argus