The air hangs heavy with anticipation as the city of gold – or Johannesburg to many of us – gears up for a yet another titanic tussle between rugby’s ultimate rivals. The Rugby Championship winning All Blacks are in town and the Springboks are waiting for them. Even with the title having been decided last weekend in La Plata, the game remains a salivating prospect.
There is no such thing as a dead rubber between the Springboks and All Blacks.
The Springboks vs the All Blacks: Rugby’s Ultimate Rivalry
I have been a rugby fan since the early 90s and clearly remember the adults talking about this team – New Zealand – as being the Boks’ ultimate test. Because of Apartheid the first time I actually saw these two heavyweights play each other was in the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final. By that stage, I was firmly an All Blacks supporter and my favourite players were Jeff Wilson and Andrew Mehrtens. I was too young to understand the significance of what was going on around me, but I was shattered when Joel Stransky slotted that extra time drop kick to hand the Webb Ellis trophy to the Boks – one of South Africa’s most iconic moments in history.
I still vividly remember how that match made me feel.
It’s been nearly 20 years since I first saw them clash and this weekend I head to Ellis Park with nearly 90000 other rugby fans eagerly anticipating the latest edition of this blockbuster rivalry. Sure, the build up to this test match is nowhere as fevered and frenzied as that week leading up to the 1995 world cup final was, but little else has changed in the time between then.
These two sides first met back in 1921 and up until South Africa was banned from international sports, the Boks had won 21 of their encounters to the All Blacks’ 18. Since readmission, it has been the All Blacks who have been the dominant force with 33 wins to the 12 of the Boks. What those stats don’t tell us is the ferocity and brutality that each All Blacks-Springboks match is played with. With nearly a century-old legacy to uphold, it is unspoken that the players put their bodies on the line in an all-out attempt to claim their rightful supremacy in the rugby world.
The compelling respect between the teams has also remained unwavering in spite of some controversial incidents that has marred the proud history between them such as the 1981 protests by New Zealanders not wanting the Apartheid era Springboks to tour their country. This mutual respect and camaraderie has filtered down to the general South African and New Zealand publics who admire each other as passionate rugby lovers. Nothing has changed since 1921. The All Blacks want to win. The Springboks want to win. As my Springbok supporting friend nicely put it to me, ‘We don’t care if they have won The Rugby Championship – we just want to beat them. That’s all that matters.’
And the Boks have a great chance of doing just that at Ellis Park this weekend. They had a storming finish to their match against the Wallabies on Saturday and let’s not forget how close they pushed New Zealand in Wellington just 3 weeks ago. Many people, myself included –felt that the Boks would have been worthy winners.
The All Blacks are also up for this match. Altitude, jet lag, the cauldron that is Ellis Park would intimidate even the best of teams, but the All Blacks have combated these elements effectively in the last few years and know what it takes to get the job done. But who is really hungry for victory? Game plans will go out the window because as with most clashes between these two rugby crazy nations, what will be the deciding factor is who wants it more.
It’s this desperation, the sheer determination to one-up one another that makes this fixture the most anticipated of our rugby calendar. The cauldron of Ellis Park comes alive once more this Saturday and it brings with it the best two teams in world rugby ready to do battle and claim their rightful supremacy.
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