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We (Biltongbek and Harry Jones) thought it might be educational to the Aussie Roarers to get to know the South African Super Rugby teams a little better.
No rugby players were harmed in the writing of this dialogue.
Sharks
Harry: Durban is a beach town; Golden Mile of beaches. The third biggest city in the Republic, with a busier port than Cape Town.
Durban is sub-tropical. Even the grass sweats. Wearing shoes is optional.
Eat the volcanic curry of the region out of a quarter loaf of bread (aka Bunny Chow) and jump in the Indian Ocean before you explode.
Durban has one of the largest population centres of Indians outside of India.
But when you swim (or surf like local hero Pat Lambie) you do actually have to dodge the sharks.
On land, you must look out for snakes. When I was a little boy in Durban we had to kill a lot of snakes hiding near the banana trees in the steep back yard.
With all those snakes, Jake White will feel at home. He will continue the Shark tradition of finding the best farm boys (the Du Plessis brothers for example) and turning them into beach boys.
When they were Natal, the Sharks were the ‘English’ team who played attractive non-winning rugby.
Now, they are a formidable team, and most are picking them to win the SA conference.
They have a cool stadium; but it can be inundated by bees or water.
Biltongbek: Beach town? Golden Mile? Nah, when you approach Durban from the N3 Highway it looks like a industrial warehouse.
I call it the sweatbox of South Africa. No jacuzzis or saunas needed. No use to dry yourself after a shower.
At least when it rains, it feels less sticky.
They shouldn’t be called the Sharks. The Poachers is more apt.
Durbanites walk like bananas, surfboard under one arm, some weed in the other. They greet you with a “howzit bru”.
Before money was invented in 1990, the Sharks were rubbish at rugby, just shows what a surfboard, a little purchase power and some weed can do.
Bulls
Harry: There’s three capitals in South Africa. Cape Town makes the law, Bloemfontein interprets the law, and Pretoria says “ignore all that; we just tell you what to do.”
The name of the city may change soon to Tshwane (the name of the leader of a nomadic tribe that was in the area in the mid-1800s) but nothing will really change.
Pretoria is heartland Afrikaner rugby; it’s not a place for beach boys.
Winston Churchill was held here as a prisoner, and anyone with an English-sounding name is a little suspect (especially anyone named Luke).
Last year, the first English-speaking captain ever was named for the Bulls’ Currie Cup team.
The Bulls are powerful and blunt and, for some reason, they are blue. They leave their opponents black and blue.
Bakkies Botha was the quintessential Bull.
They suffocate their opponents. Most of the fans are ready to jump on to the field and ruck you, but their tummies get in the way.
Biltongbek: Pretoria, better known as Mo City. If you can’t grow your mo in the allotted 30 days of Movember by the time you are 16, you are kicked out and sent to Cape Town to enjoy wine and cheese.
Here, people speak Afrikaans only, because they still think it is 1902 in Bull Land and they still won’t give into the British Empire.
If you look in the Oxford dictionary, next to ‘conservative’, you will find Pretoria. That’s why the Bulls play kick and chase rugby.
Their formula is simple – for decades they have had one philosophy, Naas/Derek/Morne will kick, the rest of the blokes will charge, and when they have the ball they drive.
They believe running is for gazelles on the open plains of Africa. The only time they run is to chase someone down to tackle.
They think the rugby ball is a cup of coffee; you don’t run with a ball or cup in hand, it might spill.
But they also like pink more than blue these days.
I often wonder whether they are trying to tell me something?
Golden Lions
Harry: The Lions are from Johannesburg; the most powerful financial capital in the whole continent.
Founded on gold and precious metals, Joburg is a big sprawling crazy town. The old mine dumps are all over the city.
There’s piles of money, but also destitution. Security is a constant concern.
It’s a city with big altitude and attitude. Their team is a mess and Ellis Park’s management is at the root of the problem.
Nowadays, they are cellar dwellers and they eat their porridge with a wooden spoon.
Their stadium is like an empty, leaky, scary cathedral on the wrong side of the tracks.
Biltongbek: Being a Lion supporter is like having an uncle in jail – you don’t talk about him, you may visit him once in a while, and when you do, you go incognito, you don’t want to be seen on the security cameras (or Supersport cameras).
It is also a bit like being the poor kid in school – when school holidays are over and the other kids start talking about their holiday, you silently creep into the corner hoping nobody asks what you did.
Harry: It sounds like Biltongbek is speaking of a real uncle.
Cheetahs
Harry: The locals of Bloemfontein are always saying they are the ‘city of roses’. But their larger municipality is Mangaung, the ‘place where the cheetahs dwell’.
They are in the very middle of the country, maybe even a pivotal place, historically.
But people from Bloemfontein are no-nonsense, family-obsessed, and not in any way pretentious.
They don’t let you litter there. They follow the rules.
It’s cheaper to live there than in Joburg, Cape Town or Durban, but let’s be honest, there’s not a lot to do there, except play rugby.
The Cheetahs play like it is the last game on earth. It’s like they read the Baa Baa playbook.
Oh, and it’s hot.
Biltongbek: In the old days people from the Free State went to the army so they could finally wear shoes and grow out their hair – ‘Mielieboere’ farmers through and through.
The Cheetahs are most likely the biggest exporter of rugby talent in the world. Pound for pound or per capita I doubt any other region in the world provides as many professional rugby players.
In contrast to the Bulls, the Cheetahs run with the ball, they pass the ball, and they have flair.
But historically they don’t tackle. Until recently, that is.
Naka Drotske had a stint at the Bulls before he retired, that is where he learnt the joy of ‘the tackle’, and it is now slowly beginning to creep into the Cheetahs’ game.
Stormers
Harry: It rains in Cape Town. Not as much as Durban, but it’s cold too.
In particular, in Newlands, where the Stormers play, it rains a lot in the winter; sometimes for a week at a time.
Forgive me while I ramble on about the city I love.
The Cape juts out into the Atlantic (and maybe even the Indian Ocean, if we are to believe that the oceans are actually separate and collide just south of Cape Point). So Capetonians experience weather.
The sailors who first circumnavigated the tip of Africa named it the ‘Cape of Storms’.
It also blows. The air is fresh in the Western Cape because it comes straight from the South Pole.
A Southeaster in Cape Town lifts skirts, messes with Eben Etzebeth’s carefully coiffed hair, and wreaks havoc on Deon Fourie’s lineout throws.
The clouds hover over the mountain that shades Newlands. The old Dutchmen who built Cape Town said the clouds were smoke from the Devil’s pipe.
The wine-producing Boland (literallly, ‘the Upland’) also sits inside Stormer territory; they have all kinds of lovely mountain passes, with names that evoke peril, like ‘God Help Me’ Pass, Dead Man Road, beautiful Helshoogte Road (which means ‘Hell’s Heights’) and the Hex River Valley, which does haunt you.
You get the picture; this is a place that likes evil and danger and superstition.
The churches in the Stellenbosch are beautiful, but dark. Sometimes, it feels like it gets dark before supper time.
Also, the cosmopolitans in Cape Town wouldn’t like to have a real ‘animal’ mascot name – they’d feel silly talking about a cheetah or a bull or a lion.
So, instead, they support a weather pattern.
Even the underlying Currie Cup team is named ‘Western Province’, an old region, rather than ‘Stormers’.
The rest of South Africa likes to make fun of Cape Town’s proud ways, but it’s definitely the best place in the world.
Biltongbek: That’s why the Capies can’t play rugby, they get so lyrical about their countryside, their wine and their beaches, they never learnt how to play proper rugby.
Instead they stand around, admire the views and ‘that mountain’, while making their defensive line impregnable.
Cape weather is like a baby’s bottom, either wet or windy. Not all that pleasant.
But they have one distinction, they have produced more Springboks than any other province.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.