Bok great Tom Bedford: The Wallabies vs the Springboks - some thoughts

Key topics:1963 Springboks struggled under amateur conditions, yet won series finale.Modern Wallabies excel despite limited resources against professional Boks.Pro rugby prep and hype contrast sharply with simpler amateur-era rugby..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up for the BizNews channel here..By Tom Bedford*.If memory serves me correctly, I was perhaps the only forward player in the Springbok teams who played against the Wallabies in all 4 of the Internationals on their tour to South Africa in 1963. That gives some idea of the selection ! Certainly, having lost the second test match at Newlands the Springbok selectors - yes there used to be a panel of selectors in those days - made whole-scale changes to the team including that of captain for the third test against John Thornett's team at the old Ellis Park in Johannesburg. The great Hennie Muller was our coach and the equally great Avril Malan our captain of the much changed Springbok XV. Being days of amateur rugby this was how it was, the challenge for the new Springbok XV only able to get together after 12 noon on the Thursday before the test at Ellis Park to prepare (otherwise the team’s players would have been deemed “professional” if assembled any earlier for the Saturday afternoon test match's 3.30 kick-off). The 30 Wallaby players on tour were managed by Bill McLachlan and coached by Alan Roper. The Australian XV beat us again on the day, 22-0 as I recall. Further changes to the Springbok XV followed for the fourth and final test match in Port Elizabeth now with no Hennie Muller nor Avril Malan. We rudderless, coachless lot went on to win the match 22 - 6 (a try counting 3 points in those days). We did so by just doing the thing we felt we had to after our by now wholly mixed batch of complete amateurs getting together less than the 50 prescribed hours before kick-off. Our effective motley Springbok XV each doing his damndest for 80 minutes won the day and saved the series from Springbok - and South African - ignominy. A few weeks ago, the 2025 Wallabies lost narrowly to the British and Irish Lions in the second test match of the Lions tour in Melbourne but then did beat them in the third and final international in Sydney a week later. The Lions, a much mooted professional outfit, clearly did not have enough players for their 9 match tour. They started with 38 but needed 45 (or was it 47?) by the tour’s end hoping for a grand slam of wins. Thwarted at the death, they obviously did not have enough coaches or accompanying staff and officials either - just 15 or so - to win the series since crucially by tour’s end the Lions' party amounted to some 60+ (so I believe). Perhaps the outcome might have been different if some of the playing squad who had not played that much at all had been selected for the Sydney international? Being “professional” though it apparently meant each Lions player on tour was paid £100,000 (AU$ 207,840, ZAR 2,386,300) regardless. Phew! I was told I had to remember that the Lions lot embodied professional coaching for professional players playing professional rugby and that it was irrelevant that on pre-professional rugby tours the British Lions used to embody just a manager, a coach and 30 players for 20+ match tours with 4 internationals. And I was told today’s Lions are not a broke outfit unlike every other professional rugby body today seems to be. So there, bugger off Bedford you old fart. But a couple of weeks later, on Saturday in fact, the professional Springboks in not losing narrowly but properly 22 - 38 to the Wallabies - the ancestral bunch who as properly also beat our amateur Springbok lot 22-0 at Ellis Park 62 years ago had, like the British and Irish Lions, carried out equally hefty professional preparations and work-outs before their series of somewhat dodgy money-raising Internationals (Third Team Barbarians, Georgia, Italy twice) took place in South Africa, all in preparation for taking on the Australians on Saturday, with another test match against them in Cape Town to follow before meeting the All Blacks and the Argentinians. Lest it be forgotten in 1963 our pre-test match preparations was effectively only a day. These current Springbok preparations began with professional Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’s first “Alignment Camp” started exactly 5 months ago. Yes, 5 moths ago in mid-March 2025 Rassie selected his squad of 56 professional players for the camp. The SA media also put out that his SARU coaching team consisted of 21 qualified professionals. .Read more:.A nation in progress: What the Springbok story reveals about SA’s growth - Marius Roodt.And having had done all this preparation and selecting the best, mostly tried and tested 23 Springboks, many of them playing abroad and not at home other than ocassionally for the Springboks, they are rarely - if ever - professionally tested against the local dirt trackers playing at home in South Africa by not meeting up against the elite cartel players of the city franchises (Stormers, Sharks, Lions, Bulls) but also those not equally valid players of SARU’s somewhat ignored and neglected 10 other provincial teams from Free State (Cheetahs), Boland (Cavaliers), Eastern Transvaal (Pumas), Griquas, etc. etc. This is what the proper Currie Cup competition used to help do in former amateur rugby times.So, given all the hype that South Africa has indulged in with its selective professional rugby prowess even if squeaking winning by one point margins (the last RWC), it is probably a good thing that happened on Saturday. With the Boks getting properly beaten after 5 months of professional preparation it is so if only to take a fresh look at the rugby set-up within and across the country which is surely what ought to matter most for our rugby and SARU ! At the same time lauding the Australians as is absolutely relevant for their professionalism in managing to beat the British and Irish Lions in Sydney and now the Springboks in Johannesburg with the scantest of financial resources, of players and of officials which the ARU additionally year on year has to face competing also against the other professional sports of Aussie Rules, Rugby League and Footie - a huge disadvantage at best compared to when rugby was a strictly amateur sport and which of course South Africa is free from. Seen in these differing lights over the past 5 months, if not years, the Wallabies achievement is really a minor miracle which, if able to be repeated in Cape Town - as they also did beating the Springboks in the foul conditions of that second international in 1963 - it will indeed be a miracle for the new professional age rugby - or is it “thugby” - where players no longer play for 80 minutes within XXIII teams either. And where Springboks can indeed be beaten even with the wylie fox, Rassie, and his co-coaches in command of the chosen 56 with their 5 months of required professional preparation and training. Given the old amateur fart that I am I just wonder about all this non-rugby added stuff and corresponding justifying and necessity seen hype nonsense which has enveloped the game as if a do or die necessity has meant there are too many cooks spoiling the broth of what has mainly become a constant physical gladiatorial 80 minute brawl overseen by people in front of television screens dictating to a professional referee who has never played “thugby” let alone been in the front row of the scrum he now adjudicates on, when “thugby’s" rule makers have simply no idea what the injury tally and head damage costs are going to be for today’s professional players come older age with the stuff they are coached to play now. .*Tom Bedford is a Springbok great, former captain and Natal rugby legend.

Bok great Tom Bedford: The Wallabies vs the Springboks - some thoughts

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