It is Currie Cup final time.
Every year this time I just can’t help to think about the 1970 Cinderella story when Griquas came from nowhwere to win the Currie Cup. That magical won by Griquas has intriqued me since I can remember and I have been loosely on the look-out for information about that match/season always thinking that I’ll make some serious investigation into at some stage.
This week I’ve found two great articles on that final which I thorougly enjoyed. The one is called a time of hero’s by Dan Retief and the other Griquas – the last of the Cinderellas by Archie Henderson.
Archie’s article is dictated to the 1970 final while Dan writes about the best Currie Cup finals he saw mentioning in the process the 1970 final in Kimberley. I’ll integate the information of the two posts with some of my own remarks.
Henderson wrote:
Forty years ago they played a Currie Cup final in Kimberley that marked the end of an era. It was the last time a Cinderella team won the cup – an outcome unlikely to happen again in this age of brutal professionalism where the rich prevail.
It was the era of amateurism and players was not aloowed to get paid but the big provinces drew players with rewards of jobs.
Northern Transvaal was the outright favorites and had a team as Henderson indicate built on the patronage of the army, air force, police, University of Pretoria and the cevil service. A team laden with Springboks including players like Tonie Roux (15), Piet Uys (9 and Captain), Thys Lourens (6), Frik du Preez (5), Johan Spies (4), Ronnie Potgieter (3), Gys Pitzer (2) and Mof Myburg (1).
Griquas had de Beers and could offer some mining jobs but Kimberley stuck between the Karoo and the Kalahari was not a very attractive location for top class players.
Roux drove more than 300km from his farm in Victoria West for practices and matches. Piet Visagie, Piet van Deventer and Joggie Viljoen travelled from Ammasol mine while others travled form Kuruman.
Ian Kirkpatrick the coach recalls, “We had only 17 players who were Currie Cup standard”. Kirkpatrick an ex-Springboks centre is often hailed as the mastermind of the heroic Griquas win, but dismisses it today, according to Archie Henderon.
There wasn’t much patcice sessions, “the players just lived too far apart” laments Kirkpatrick. “So we relied on the dedication, the confidence of the players”.
Both Kirkpatrick and Mannetjies Roux recall that there wasn’t much of a gameplan for the day.
Mannetjies had the following on this issue: “I am often asked what was the team’s gameplan, but it was rarther the appraoch to the game and the attitude of the players that counrted.”
Kirkpartick said: “Game plans are all very well but you must be able to score tries. We slowly built up a team that could score tries.”
“From 1964, when we started to built a team, we lost very few games,” Roux recalled. “By 1970 we still had 11 players who had started out with us. In every position we had players who were good, so it became easier to play together.”
Buddy Swartz the baby of the team scored two tries that day in a packed de Beers staduim in Kimberley. He was the hero of the day recalls Mannetjies Roux not mentioning that he and and centre partner Koos Waldeck had helped to set-up Swarz’s first try.
Archie Henderson writes;
Many in the Griquas team were in their thirties and playing their last big game, but Swartz, a product of Kimberley Boys High, was 21 and had only returned to his home town to fulfill the terms of a De Beers bursary.
He’d been pllaying good rugby for the University of Cape Town, but mostly in the under-20’s. Back in Kimberley, he was thrust into the Currie Cup team.
Swartz’s tries came in the first half, but Northern Trnasvaal fought back. The game was was in the balance untill the near the end, when Griquas flanker Peet Smit kicked a penalty from inside his own half to win the game 11-9.
Dan Retief recalls the following regarding Swartz and his two tries:
Buddy Swartz, a UCT student whom the Griqua selectors had overlooked until a practice outing against Free State immediately before the Final, scored two spectacular tries, the second by diving straight over the top of a crouching Tonie Roux, almost on the same spot in the right-hand corner; Jannie van Aswegen landed a punch on Johan Spies that rang around the old De Beers Stadium and Peet Smith took over from Piet Visagie and kicked the long-range penalty that made it 11-9 to Griquas.
At the end I sat down on the field, near Buddy’s corner, and waited for the crowd to disperse. Mannetjies Roux had been carried off the field laughing and crying at the same time and an old man with a long beard knelt down in the in-goal area and patted the grass where Swartz had scored: “God die rooinek,” he said, “God die rooinek… nie net een nie, twee… net hier.” Tears streamed out of his eyes and left streaks on his beard; when I left he was still there patting the ground.
I got tears in my eyes reading that, isn’t is just magical?
Dan Retief continues:
What a day it was for Kimberley, what a week, what a year, what a time. The Currie Cup won by Mannetjies Roux and his bunch of heroes was displayed in one of the windows of the SA Perm and for weeks afterwards there would be a knot of people on the pavement just admiring it; like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
Yes I can just imagine that; there is not much to do in Kimberley and having the Currie Cup in a shop window would just about cause a traffic jam in Kimberley bringing everyone from as far as Upington, Van Zyl’s Rust and Askam to the West; Beaufort West and Victoria West from the South and Vryburg, Wolmaranstad and Schweizer-Reneke from a Northish direction to Kimberley to come and see the holy grail of South African rugby.
The Griqualand West team who won the Currie Cup in 1970.
Players on the picture are from left to right. Front row: Piet Visagie, Charlie Marais (President Griqualand West Union), Mannetjies Roux (captain), Ian Kirkpatrick (coach), Denys Vorster (o / Capt). Middle row: Koos Waldeck, Buddy Swartz, Piet van Deventer, Peet Smith, Tos Smith, James Combrinck and Joggie Viljoen. Rear: Braam Fourie, Jannie van Aswegen Gert Scheepers and Soon Nel. Kat Myburg was absent when the photo was taken.