Worst game of my rugby career and have never forgotten it almost 30 years later. It is like it happened yesterday and definitely left an impact on myself.
This week I tagged the community with a new topic being #sportingdisasters. I
am curious to see what everyone would consider a sporting disaster. For myself it is something that doesn't go quite according to plan.
This particular match remains fresh in my memory almost 30 years later so it did impact myself more than I thought it had at the time. I am not one of those sporting people who say it is the taking part that counts as where is the competitive spirit in that?
When you are training for any sport you are training to win otherwise why would you train. In rugby like nay other sport it takes time and commitment with practices each week. Back then we were training 3 times per week which is serious commitment for amateurs who have day jobs. Practices started at 6pm and went on well past 8.30 pm most times.
I am sure things are done differently these days with at least some knowledge on the team you are playing up against. This was never mentioned in one single practice as no homework had been done on any team in the league. This shows me how far the sport has progressed and definitely something we would have all benefitted from.
The team I played for had decent players including provincial Sharks team members and Springboks. They never always played as they had their commitments and were allotted only so many games per season. We did have some Scotland Internationals who came over for the summer break with the likes of Craig Chalmers, Rob wainwright, Gregor Townsend and a few others who I have forgotten. The team I played for had a decent squad when everyone was available yet this week we were low on numbers.
The team was going to play Empangeni which is roughly a 2 hour drive away from Durban and know as it took way longer due to road works. This on a Friday night being a knockout cup game. I never travelled with the team bus as the main aim was to win the game and get back to Durban as quickly as possible before 2am preferably.
Kick off was at 9pm and if you know what Empangeni has to offer as entertainment this was the place to be for every farmer and his dog. I arrived at the ground around 8.45pm and there was no team bus with kick off due to happen in 15 minutes. This normally doesn't bode well as we normally have a good 60 minutes warm up prior to kick off.
The bus eventually arrived just after 9pm to whistles and jeers from the waiting crowd who had grown more than I expected. It is not uncommon to have 10-20 000 supporters attend club matches on a regular basis. Any place that has drinks flowing with live music a crowd will form.
We had no time for a team talk or preparation as it was every man for themselves to get changed and focus the mind. That bit didn't really happen as the locals were particularly noisy that night and could see the team was psyched out already.
Empangeni was a crap team but a banana skin never the less which we were expected to win comfortably. The referee was a local and hadn't crossed my mind he would do us in. We soon realised we were in for a battle as the whistle blew to start the match.
Most of us were roughed up in the first few minutes through various acts of foul play which we retaliated with and were penalised for defending ourselves. I still don't get how he saw our punches and not theirs and this continued right through to half time. The crowd were baying for blood telling the referee every time they thought we were doing something illegal. This was no fair match and was a kangaroo court in the sticks on a Friday night.
At half time the guys were pissed as we had no answers to what was happening. The coach thinking back was seriously lacking a motivation talk as he was already thinking of the 3 and a bit hour bus trip back. No one wanted to be here and can see why half the squad was unavailable for this trip and had pulled out midweek. We were the entertainment that night served up on a silver platter.
The second half went much the way as the first with certain tries we had scored being disallowed for some or other reason. We were thumping them up front as that was not the problem but the penalty count against us was literally killing any momentum we had. The final whistle blew and we had lost in an "upset" by a handful of points.
The locals were happy and now wanted to party inviting us to stay and enjoy their hospitality. Talk about a mood breaker as I am sure if we had won we would have partied gladly. I know I showered afterwards but the rest of the team on the bus just carried everything as they were and left.
On Monday evenings practice the match was never mentioned once as though it had never happened. We all knew we had never been given a chance in hell with firstly no warm up as the time was just not sufficient to do things properly. This was very amateurish all round and should never have been allowed to end up this way. I was young at the time and still learning even though I was playing first division rugby. Sometimes controls are removed which you would normally take for granted and still think about this game today as what we could have done to change things and there is lots that could have been done.