Rassie Erasmus sold a great dummy

Frik Du Preez, once voted South African rugby player of the 20th Century, had no doubt about what had happened at Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria on October 6, 1990.

It was one of the most epic upsets in SA rugby history up to that time, when Natal beat Northern Transvaal 18-12 in the final of the Currie Cup.

They tricked us!” said Frik, whose blood ran blue – the colours of Northerns (now called the Bulls) – for decades. He quickly went on to say that was no excuse because the big Northerns boys should, on paper at least, have pulverised the souties from the Banana Republic (who are now known as the Sharks).

Rugby, though, is a game which is played on a field, not paper. Yet, with the home ground advantage – and the Northerns/Bulls supporters were, and are, some of the most fiercely loyal and vociferous in the game – they should have walked it. Talk is that the union management had already printed special labels for the bottle of celebratory champagne.

According to Oom Frik, the Natal trick was to play badly two weeks previously against Northerns – and 28-6 was pretty bad. So the boys from Pretoria were lulled into a false sense of security, aided and abetted by the partisan Afrikaans media who, at that time, would seize any opportunity to refight the Boer War.

Even down in KwaZulu-Natal, nobody gave their team much of a chance against Northerns – after all they had taken the previous hammering at their home ground, Kings Park.

Frik always felt – with hindsight, of course – that the boys in black-and-white were holding something back. And they were – in the form or mercurial winner Tony Watson, who scored a try but took such a brutal and foul hit in the process from hooker Ulli Schmidt that it cut short his promising rugby career. And then there was a flyhalf called Joel Stransky…

Watching the Boks send the English home on Saturday was a sense of deja vu for me. I interviewed Oom Frik after the game and I always believe the Durban outfit did a superb job of pulling the wool over Northerns’ eyes. And, watching South Africa’s fluid, running, in-your-face rugby I wonder if Rassie Erasmus did the same thing.

Sure, no coach with such a lot at stake would order his team to play badly to hoodwink opponents. But at the same time, I wonder if the box kicking of Faf de Klerk, which so infuriated fans at home in the run-up to the final, was not deliberately overemphasised.

Certainly, it was a different Faf and a different backline to the one which beat Wales the week before. The English expected to recover possession from Springbok box kicks and launch their attacks. They never got a chance, because Faf was passing far more than he was kicking and they were being mowed down in the midfield by a much stronger and more physical team.

There was a joke about the loneliest job in the world being that of a South African wing. They seldom touched the ball in the Welsh showdown. Yet, yesterday, it was wings who scored both tries.

England never saw it coming. Rassie Erasmus did because – I believe – he planned it that way. You may have sold some good dummies during your career, Rassie. But this was definitely the best.

Brendan Seery

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