History
The afternoon of the same morning they arrived from South Africa the Springboks played in their first game against a combined team of Western Australia in PERTH.
Charles Blunt the President of Australian rugby formally welcomed every Springbok with a handshake before the first match (see Picture below).
This picture shows Charles Blunt president of Australia rugby being introduced to the players by Hannes Marais before the first match. Here he shakes hands with Dirk de Vos.
From left to right: Robbie Barnard; Piet Visagie; Johan Spies and Joggie Jansen
One of the brightest stints in the history of Springbok rugby was in 1970 and 1971. In 1970 South Africa of course won the 4 test series against Brain Lochore super All Black team at home. The 1971 international season started off with two tests at home against a French touring side. The Springboks won the first one on 12 June 1971 in Bloemfontein 22-9 and drew the second one 8 all on 19 June 1971 in Durban.
18 July 1956, Fraser Park, Timaru – Springboks 20 / 8 South-Canterbury & North-Otago & Mid-Canterbury Combined
Craven took a week off –resting at Mount Cook- and under instruction of assistant manager Dan de Villiers the Springbok intentions was to run the ball against a team not likely to front any stiff opposition.
A number of factors combined to derail the effort especially in the last quarter of the second half when the match turned into an extremely scrappy affair. These factors being injuries –before and during the match- poor refereeing, and a general sort of holiday or lack of real application attitude amongst the second stringers. Continue reading
14 July 1956 – Carisbrook, Dunedin: All Blacks 10 / Springboks 6
Test matches are won by taking your changes. The prevailing thought after this test match was that New Zealand deserved to win mostly because they took their chances while South Africa made it easy for them by employing the wrong game tactics, with poor decision making on attack and annoying ball handling errors. Reg Sweet writes in his book ‘Springbok and Silverfern’: “New Zealand had three chances throughout the match. New Zealand took them, and so New Zealand won. It was as straight forward as that.”
The Springbok forwards surprised everyone and were without a doubt the better team in the scrum pushing the All Blacks on repeated occasion’s meters back in the scrum. New Zealand worked out some strategies to counter Claassen in the lineout as the game progressed -making it a bit more of an even contest in the latter stages of the match- but South Africa still won the lineout contest comprehensively 28-35. South Africa won the scrum count 12-21. Reg Sweet wrote: “New Zealand’s pack, astonishing sight, was attempting to heel at times while obviously on the back pedal.”
Injury ridden the 1956 Bokke arrive in New Zealand
This Article is a bit out of sequence with the rest of the Atricles on the 1956 Springbok tour. I recently got some more information on the 1956 tour, especially about the Australian leg of the tour. I also needed an Article on the arrival in New Zealand for my web site so I decided to add this information. By the end of this week I will write an Article on the first test of the 1956 series including some video clips.
After a smooth flight of five hours across the Tasman, the Springboks arrived in New Zealand on the evening of Tuesday 5 June. Warwick Roger narrates the arrival as follows in his book ‘Old Heroes’:
With the international season taking a bit of a breather, I thought some informative statistics would be interesting. I am looking at the home record of the top nations, seeing when was the last time they lost a home test to each of the other nations.
I would think any nation would expect at least a 75% home win record as the minimm standard to attain. anything less would mean your home ground advantage counts for very little and travelling teams do not find it a daunting task to tour.
7 July 1956 – Carisbrook, Dunedin
South Africa 14 / Otago 9
Jan Pickard
Dunedin and Otago has to some extend been to New Zealand rugby what Stellenbosch and Western Province rugby were to South African rugby. Both University cities that lost their respective roles as gateways to the respective national sides due to the professional era and neither Stellenbosch nor Dunedin is today the rugby powerhouses or talent accumulators if not developers it used to be.
South Africa 41 / Nelson Combined 3
The 1956 Springboks had two matches left to start playing as a team before the first test, it was not about notching up results anymore it was time for the forwards to start playing as a pack and for the backline to show some polish.
South Africa 22 / Hawkes Bay 8
This match was played in the looming shadow of the first test on the back of mounting concern about the Springboks inability to hit form and constant worries about injuries to players.
As a consequence different players and combinations were selected in the key positions in literally every match so far on tour.
Springboks 22 / Poverty Bay-East Coast Combined 0
The Springboks travelled by plane -for the first time on tour- from Wellington to Gisborne to play a combined Poverty Bay-East Coach team.
Gisborne was a lovely town (now a city) nestling amid the hills and woods which fringe Poverty Bay, where Captain Cook made his first landing in Aotearoa. Continue reading
The first Currie Cup Final was played in 1939 (before that the Currie Cup did not have a Final Game), at Newlands when Transvaal beat Western Province. The Sharks (a.k.a. Natal) are back in the Final for the second year in a row and will be playing the Golden Lions (a.k.a. Transvaal) for the fourth time in a Currie Cup Final.
“We have a policy at Loftus and if there are any banners that are political, racial, religious or cultural, we take those banners away,” said Loftus Versfeld stadium manager Hugo Kemp. Continue reading
Am I the only one that thought the test at Loftus over the weekend between the Springboks and Australia was actually pretty good? Continue reading
Two Greg Growden articles to start the next two weeks battle for the Tri Nations wooden spoon. Aussies feel they got all the answers to beat us, but lets see how the next two weeks unfold.
Loftus Versfeld, home to the Currie Cup and Super 14 champions, home to Wynie Strydom and last but not least, home to probably the greatest mass of copyright infringement agents in South Africa, also doubling as ‘the fans’, and please, if you own a cap that says BULL’S and you don’t know what I am talking about, and you don’t understand what is wrong with a cap saying BULL’S, stop reading now (because you probably already missed the thread of the story), and hand yourself over to the nearest police officer.