By David O’Sullivan
A piece of sports history was made this week, with the announcement of the team that will represent South Africa at the Rio Olympic Games in Rugby Sevens.
The fans will call them the Blitzbokke, but officially they’re part of Team South Africa and will wear a South African Olympic jersey rather than the Springbok Sevens jersey.
It’s an excellent team, and should guarantee South Africa a medal at the Rio Games. In fact, this team has gold medal potential. It comprises all the stalwarts of the team that came second in the recent World Sevens Series. The rock-steady Kyle Brown is captain, and includes Kwagga Smith and Seabelo Senatla who were named in the Sevens Dream Team, with Senatla finishing the season as top try scorer. Last year’s Player of the Year Werner Kok is back despite missing the whole season with a knee injury.
The side is so good that there’s no place for the greatest Springbok wing of his generation, Bryan Habana. But that’s not too much of a surprise. Habana played in only two of the World Series tournaments – Las Vegas and Vancouver, and managed four games in total. He was injured playing for Toulon and missed the final two tournaments of the season. Coach Neil Powell correctly figured he hadn’t seen enough of Habana to judge his sevens skills, and South Africa’s top try-scorer saw his dreams of an Olympic medal come to an end.
A Springbok does make the cut – Juan de Jongh, the Stormers centre who has played 14 Tests for South Africa. Another Stormers regular Cheslin Kolbe has shown his versatility to earn an Olympic call-up. And mention has to be made of the ever-green veteran Cecil Afrika, whose experience is invaluable.
@BlitzBokke Squad for rio is impressive, its tough being @Neil5Powell at this point but his squad is top notch…lets go#Rio2016
— IamKing (@zandi_masilela) July 14, 2016
Standing in the way of this team and Olympic glory is composure, a lack of which cost them dearly throughout the season. They won in Cape Town and made the final of three other tournaments. In two of those finals – Wellington and London – the Blitzbokke threw away a comprehensive lead to lose after the hooter had sounded. In Wellington, they had a commanding 21-7 lead over New Zealand with five minutes to play, yet lost 21-24. In London, they led Scotland 26-15 with one minute to play, yet lost 26-27. In the final in Vancouver they lost 14-19 to New Zealand, but with one more attacking opportunity remaining, kicked the ball out on the full after the hooter had sounded.
They lost four times in the semi-finals and twice in the quarterfinals. It was a season of “if only”, as they lost too many vital games by the smallest margin of error.
Powell knows he’s got a team bristling with talent. If there’s any work to be done, it’s about getting the players’ minds right.
There’s an interesting snippet of information in the last lines of the story of the Blitzbokke team selected for the Rio Olympic Games: “It is the first time in 92 years that rugby will form part of the Olympics. The current gold medal holders are the United States.”
You might want to argue, as I do, that Sevens rugby is making its debut at, not a return to, the Olympic Games. The rugby that was played previously at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris was the 15-man game – a form of rugby so different from Sevens as to be classified as a different competition. Rather like breaststroke and freestyle are both swimming, but are classified as different competitions.
Possibly I’m splitting hairs as it’s of no real consequence in the end. A team of South African rugby players is competing at the Olympic Games and that’s a first.
🇿🇦SQUAD! @kylegbrown to captain @Blitzboks @rio2016_en! #AreYouReady? https://t.co/oTNWyjxFbn #RoadToRio pic.twitter.com/CEG18P6ij1
— World Rugby Sevens (@WorldRugby7s) July 14, 2016
But what about the bit that says the United States are the current Olympic gold medal holders? The USA? Surely not…
Amazingly, the statistic is correct. Rugby was an Olympic event in 1900 in Paris (France beat Great Britain to claim gold), in 1908 in London (Australia beat Great Britain 32-3), in 1920 in Antwerp (USA beat France 8-0).
In the 1924 Paris Olympics rugby tournament France, Romania and the defending champions, the United States, competed. France and the USA beat Romania to set up the gold medal match, and the USA went on to thrash the host nation 17-3 in the final played in front of 40 thousand horror-stricken French fans.
By all accounts the final was a bad-tempered affair. It seems the authorities anticipated trouble and put up a fence around the field prior to kick-off. The play was rough and after two French players were injured, the partisan crowd started to heckle the American players. Soon fights broke out in the stands and a student from Illinois was knocked unconscious after being hit in the face with a walking stick.
When the final whistle blew, spectators stormed the field to attack the victorious Americans, who had to be protected by the police and some of the French players. At the awards ceremony, the USA anthem was drowned out by French boo-ing and the Americans, clutching their gold medals, were escorted off the field by the police.
Congrats to each member of the Sevens team who was selected for Rio. We are immensely proud of you all! @Blitzboks @teamsa16
— Stellenbosch Academy of Sport (@sas_hp) July 14, 2016
The riot damaged rugby’s reputation at the Games and after the retirement of the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a big rugby fan, and a lack of interest from the big rugby-playing nations, the sport was dropped from the itinerary.
The sport made a brief return to the Olympics as an exhibition sport at the 1938 Berlin Games.
Rugby had a major influence on the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. After Andy Leslie’s All Blacks team toured South Africa earlier in the year, a number of African countries and Guyana demanded that New Zealand be expelled from the Montreal Games for breaking the sports boycott of South Africa. The IOC refused, arguing that rugby wasn’t an Olympic sport. New Zealand participated in the Games and 25 African nations withdrew along with Guyana.
A period of intense lobbying by the International Rugby Board followed, and the IOC chairman at the time Juan Antonio Samaranch, a former rugby player, agreed that rugby should make a return. It was only when his successor Jacques Rogge, another ex-rugby player, took over as IOC chief that it was agreed in 2009 that rugby should be reintroduced in 2016.
It might not be the 15-man game, but I’ll take it. Mark Team South Africa down for a medal. Oh, go on – mark them down for gold. I’m feeling optimistic.
