The stocky referee approached the visiting captain, as he knelt to retie a broken lace, an orange peel still fixed in his mouth, as if it was a neon gum guard.

“Second half. No more punches. I’ll send you off for any funny business.”

He blushed. He spat the orange out. He thought those upper cuts into his opposing number eight’s mouth had escaped scrutiny. But he had noticed Meneer van Niekerk having a chat with the home team just before he walked over to their wounded huddle.

Down fifteen points, without much possession to work with, two of their best players locked in an argument, and both replacements on the field, the visitors were a mixture of embarrassed, enraged, or already beaten.

No practice had prepared the boys from the Southern Suburbs for what they would encounter in the second half of this Under 14A match in Paarl on a cold sunny Saturday morning in 1980.

Their coaches conveyed a message using Kruger, whose arm was in a sling already, securing a broken collarbone suffered on Paarl Gim’s first try. “They say you guys have to take the piss out of them.”

“Is it?” the captain asked Kruger. He felt that some of his team envied the fullback’s injury. His replacement, Martel Kriel, had literally run away from the Paarl Gim number eight when he broke their line. Only a backtracking Sakkie Engelke’s tap tackle saved a third try.

“Ja. Snotklaps all around. Basson says you won’t be in trouble with him if you moer somebody. He says you have to hitchhike home if you don’t.”

This was a marked departure from the noble themes of the the senatorial speech Mr Steyn had given before first match about heritage, “utmost respect,” and integrity.

Down by fifteen points after a brutal first half during which they only had the ball in their hands from up-and-under kicks, and could not win a scrum with a whimpering redhead at tight-head who had given up and forgotten all that Mr Frankfurter had taught him about being a pincer and instead become a wet, sloppy hot dog surrender sausage, and no real expectation of winning a lineout against a pack whose shortest player was almost six foot tall, the muddy, bloody team from Cape Town took their places to receive the kick-off from the Paarl Gim captain, whose uniform was still pristine.

The circling mountains were covered with low clouds streaming down to a certain point and then disappearing as if commanded by the settlers of this pious valley, but the sun had cleared the peaks and warmed the players and spectators.

The captain looked for Adele in the stands but could not find her. He scanned the touchline for his coaches, but they were obscured behind Paarl Gim’s First Team, who looked like a tribe of festive behemoths in some lost epoch.

He pulled Sakkie Engelke with him and they trotted over to Alan Els. “Elsie. No more kicks. I’ll be on your right shoulder. Sakkie on your left.”

The whistle sounded, the ball flew high, and Andre Botha claimed it. Sakkie fetched it, breaking the Paarl tackler’s deadening grasp with a downward snap of his shoulder, and Theron zipped a flat pass to Els who had his head down. As he skipped to his left, Els left the ball behind, in the air, as if suspended. The captain scooped it before it started its descent and squeezed through a gap in the offside midfielders, and was surprised to see open ground.

From the corner of his right eye, he spied two outside support runners in blue, but he used them only as decoys with a half dummy. In two seconds he had only the fullback to beat.

After the match, it was that fullback’s face that was stuck in his brain. He had small eyes hiding under thick eyebrows, and full broad cheeks, almost fat.

The captain swivelled left, then went to the fullback’s left, but four or five strides in, his instinct was doubt. He chipped the wet ball over the fullback, whose porcine eyes suddenly widened.

And then they raced to the ball, which was bouncing slowly towards the white line. He had the jump, but the thick fullback was fast too, and nobody else had a shot but them. The ball was high, then low, then low again, as they sprinted, and then the fullback slid and skidded in, while the chasing captain kept his feet and skipped over the defender. One last bounce and the ball almost went backwards, too high for the fullback, and nestled just in the captain arms as he screamed the worst obscenity he knew, and dove over just by the right upright.

Wolhuter was the first teammate to him, and he realised how close behind he had been all that time. They shook hands. “Maybe we do this.” Wolhuter ran back to the halfway, shoulder to shoulder with the captain, not even watching Els convert.

It was 15-6 and the home team responded with a ferocious charge after the restart.

“Don’t kick!” he shouted at Els, as he ran to the ruck, and stamped on a Paarl arm.

“Leave it,” the referee barked.

The ball fell out, and pushing Theron away, the rampaging captain picked it up, and dropped it.

“Syphilis c—–!” he bellowed. “F—-face!”

The referee laughed, and so did the Paarl Gim players. “Language, captain.” He nodded.

The one thing he feared was a scrum. As they packed down, he told Greenberg to wheel it back, and Chadwick to go skew on the loose-head side, and told Sakkie to “go early.” All sixteen boys wound up in a heap, but the ball was out and skipped along the Paarl Gim backline. Wolhuter flattened the outside centre, and the ball trickled backwards, as loose forwards pounded across the field.

The non-scrummaging Sakkie was the first to arrive, but he was knocked off the ball, and then both sides had boys trying to march over it. Then they were past the ball and out it came on their side and Theron threw a wobbly one-bounce pass to Els, who took it into contact, kept his feet, and freed the ball, to Sakkie who had run a scimitar-shaped line, and stepped inside, then out, and handed off the Paarl Gim flyhalf.

“Yes, yes, yes!” the captain boomed as Sakkie hit halfway and was about to be dragged down. Sakkie flipped the ball over his pursuers and this time the captain had to reach down to field it, put a hand down to steady himself and then saw tiny Martel Kriel near the left sideline without anything in front of him but grass.

Is there anything prettier than a long, flat, spiraled rugby pass travelling to an empty space as a back sprints to it, catching it as if it were a bounty promised by some unknown deity, a god of space and time?

Kriel scampered to the try line motivated by an extreme phobia of being hit by the Paarl Gim defenders, and rather than round to the posts, he dotted down just inside the maroon corner flag.

The barefoot boys changed the visitors’ score from 6 to 10 instead of waiting for the kick as if they already knew the conversion would fail.

Els was sitting down at the halfway line, holding his right knee. He shook his head.

The captain had played fly-half in primary school for a season, and thought: “I’ll have a go.” A boy with a bucket of yellow sand ran to him and he built an oblong kicking base just inside the touchline. He felt rushed, but took the time to smooth the sides of his sculpture before tilting the ball slightly backwards on the sand.

Four steps backward, two to the left, then a half step back, sidewinding to the ball, and then a thud through the heavy leather, sending the ball into the air, careening towards the right post. He waited for the hook, but the ball refused to obey. The dreaded straight ball off the tee. The bleach-haired scorekeepers in gray shorts laughed with each other, and pumped their small fists.

The clock was racing, and the score was 15-10 for the home team.

“They tired! They tired!” screamed Mr Basson, who had reappeared now that they were not humiliated. “Run it! Move the ball!”

For the next ten minutes the teams tackled each other and did not miss and no-one dropped the ball and no-one stole the ball; a few kicks and lineouts were the only units of measure. Every tackle ended with an elbow or stamp and every chase was impeded. Every jumper was pulled at, and every throw-in was skew and every ruck was a fight on the dirty docks, knuckles and inquiries about parentage and a knee to the chest.

Els was hobbled and could not kick the ball, but he soldiered on, and as this slender joker tackled everything in his channel, and got stuck in on the niggle, his teammates saw that this was no ordinary day. Cecil Chadwick’s purple eye had gone black and was shut.

And Sakkie was everywhere. The dark, freckled flanker had found an extra gear. He was rabid. He was stopping every parry, every thrust by the determined home team.

The Gim players were talking to him, about him, over him. About his skin. About who he was. Their eighthman softly sang a song “Kaffertjie” that seemed made up especially for Sakkie, after he was tackled out into touch, into the linesman, into a table. Nobody laughed on either side. The captain thought about bringing it to the referee’s attention, but he decided against it.

“How much time, sir?” he asked, instead.

“Seven minutes.”

Paarl Gim started to win the ball and kick the ball and chase the ball and they were stuck in their 22 with a lame fly-half; Els had shifted out to the wing, and Gary Wilkins was playing first receiver because he had the biggest boot on the team.

Gim won a crooked lineout with a lifted lock and formed a maul. Sakkie wormed his way into the heart of it, and sacked it by pulling the “coxswain’s” pants down, his whole body down. As they all struggled to their feet, the de-panted Gim number eight was cursing at Sakkie for being a degenerate product of mismatched pig semen and Arab whores with curry feces causing his face to resemble a Bushman’s behind. Or something like that.

The captain hit his opposite number with a straight overhead right, straight down the pipe, and down that boy went, his mouth finally silenced.

As good as it felt, he knew he had lost the plot. The crowd jeered him, as the referee sent him off, with only a few minutes left. He stood near Adele, and shrugged as Paarl Gim’s First Team surrounded him.

The Gim scrumhalf should have booted the ball out, to let his big pack languidly stroll to a deep lineout they might steal. But he quick-tapped and ran through Els’ tackle, recycled it quickly to his fly-half captain, who could have hoisted another skyscraping punt, but instead threw a long pass to his left, which hung in the air, and came down into one of streaking Sakkie’s hands. He gathered it after one bobble and then ran eighty metres to score, speeding up as he finished it under the posts.

The captain bowed his head and gripped his fists and tucked himself into a roaring ball of fury.

“Take your time!” he screamed as Wilkins took the conversion to go up 16-15 and Wilkins rushed it but the kick was over, the game was almost won, and there was one last chance for the home team, but they were trying too hard and the ball was lost and the game was over, and the captain ran on to the pitch shouting and trying to get to Sakkie, but there was a real fight, an honest fistfight going on around the flanker, and coaches and linesmen and even a father were pulling boys apart.

Finally, the teams were shepherded away, and before a tense handshake line formed (because that is what rugby players do), Sakkie gave the captain one last rendition of his Computer Games dance.

Hips shaking, head bobbing, and bright smiling; the team gathered and clapped while the small dark flank had his day in the sun in the valley.