WE GOTTA BEAT THE SPRINGBOKS

‘Cause the World Depends on Us

I’m taking a punt (pun intended) on the All Blacks meeting the Springboks in the Rugby World Cup Final…

Nazi Germany’s Bismarck battleship was, when launched in 1939, the largest battleship ever. She (why “She”?) was over 250 meters in length, weighed about 50,000 tons and was named after German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

In the 1941 Battle of the Denmark Strait the Bismarck destroyed British Battlecruiser HMS Hood, which spurred the British Royal Navy into deadly pursuit of the Bismarck. In the North Atlantic, 15 Fairy Swordfish torpedo bombers - launched off British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal - took out Bismarck’s steering gear. The next morning British battleships and cruisers finished off the Bismarck, which her Nazi crew then scuppered.

American musician Johnny Horton commemorated the demise of the Bismarck with his song “Sink the Bismarck”. (As with the Bismarck, Horton’s time in the sun was short. Two years after his breakthrough in music, Horton was tragically killed in a car crash.) Take a listen to Horton’s song, an echo from a bygone era…

“Sink the Bismarck” has a wonderful old-fashioned sense of virtuous mission, including the following verse:

We'll find the German battleship that's makin' such a fuss
We gotta sink the Bismarck cause the world depends on us
Hit the decks a-runnin' boys and spin those guns around
When we find the Bismarck we gotta cut her down

Bismarck du Plessis was a South African rugby player. It’s not clear whether he was named after the German Chancellor or the Bismarck battleship or neither.

What is clear is that du Plessis eye gouged All Black Adam Thompson in 2008.

It’s also tenably clear that Bismarck du Plessis took performance-enhancing drugs during his career and that the 2019 Springboks have been fueled by anabolic steroids. No international rugby team trains harder than the All Blacks, and they’ve never collectively exhibited physiques anything like the Springboks’.

Cheating is therefore the first reason why it’s crucial for the All Blacks to beat the Springboks in the 2023 Rugby World Cup Final. And inveterate drug cheating is not the only cheating that South African Rugby stoops to. As hosts of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the final of which the Springboks won 15-12 over the All Blacks, South Africa deliberately poisoned the All Blacks before that final. Wonderful writer and legendary sports journalist Spiro Zavos is adamant that South Africa should never have hosted another international sporting event after that disgraceful episode of State-sponsored “hospitality”. And don’t get me onto Vuvuzelas, those horrendous, deafening, plastic horns mindlessly blown by South African sporting crowds.

The second reason why the All Blacks absolutely must beat the Springboks in the Final is that a Springbok win would be used by South Africa’s current kleptocratic regime to self-promote. Nelson Mandela would turn in his grave if he could see what South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his crooked crony regime are now up to.

By way of illustration of the depths to which the ruling African Nation Congress has plunged, let’s take the curious Cash-In-Couch Kerfuffle.  In 2020, between USD580,000 and USD4m in cash was stolen from a game farm owned by President Ramaphosa, out of a couch where he’d had it stashed. Ramaphosa did not report the theft to the Police. The incident was only “investigated” when an opposition party, the African Transformation Movement Party, found out about the incident and complained to South African’s Public Prosecutor’s office. Acting Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka, whose office is supposed to hold politicians to account, accepted that Ramaphosa knew about the money and its theft but found nonetheless that he had done nothing at all wrong. Umm.

The third reason why the Rugby World is depending on the All Blacks to beat the Springboks in the Final is that the Boks play a brutal, boring and boorish brand of rugby. On the other hand, at their best the All Blacks are the rugby equivalent of the Brazilian football team, playing a constructive, ambitious and scintillating brand of rugby that’s great to watch and sells Rugby Union to the world.

So let’s finish off by having some fun with the above verse from the “Sink the Bismarck” song…

We'll fight the Springbok juggernaut, that Yarpie bag of puss
We gotta beat the Springboks cause the World depends on us
Hit Stade de France a-runnin' boys and take the Boks to ground
Get your feet right on their throats and snatch the Rugby Crown