WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Four days before the British & Irish lions were due to play the Springboks in the second Test in Pretoria, I received an invitation to attend. The only girl in a party of six. Three days in South Africa, over a weekend, would require extensive diary rearrangements and (as we were expecting guests) Mr M to locate the linen cupboard.
I couldn’t possibly accept. Who would change the sheets, do the laundry, the shopping and the cooking at the weekend if I pushed off to a rugby match 6,000 miles away? On the other hand, who would do all that if I didn’t go to the game? Yes, me. I rang back and accepted immediately.
Mr M evinced total disbelief. Why would five men want to go to a rugby match with me? Why not? I had a very good time, as it happens. Not only was the rugby very exciting but it was a very social event. I was only immobilised for an hour and a half in the Loftus stadium; the rest of the time I was networking furiously. From newspaper editors to finance directors, they were all there. The question is not why did I go; it’s why had I never been before.
I did struggle a bit with the rules of rugby union. While the atmosphere at a live sporting fixture is impossible to recreate in your living room, at least there you see the action up close, plus you usually have someone on hand to explain what’s going on. The Lions led at the end of the first half, and right at the end of the second it looked as if the match was going to be a draw, which would have set the series up nicely for the third and final encounter. But no. For some reason South Africa were awarded a penalty – and they kicked it straight between the posts.
The striking thing about the Springboks was how few black players they have. More than 20 years after Nelson Mandela walked free from prison, the national rugby team still consists mainly of white players. On the other hand, the national South African football team, Bafana Bafana, is almost entirely black – an exception being a chap called Matthew Booth.
I guess that while rugby remains a game played by privileged children you can’t expect much change. Which is why I was pleased to read in the match programme that the Lions’ principal sponsor, HSBC, has been supporting a scheme to introduce rugby to children in South Africa’s townships. Some 80 per cent of the children who have participated in the programme have never played rugby before. Maybe by the time the Lions return to South Africa, in a few years, it will have helped to ensure the team reflects the racial balance of the country a little better.
Of course, the real reason HSBC was in the news that weekend was not its rugby sponsorship, but because its chairman, Stephen Green, had just published a book. Good Value (let’s put a disclaimer out right now: this is published by Penguin, a Pearson company) doesn’t mention rugby. But given the state of the world economy, any book subtitled Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World and which is only 250 pages long should, in my opinion, expect a strong following. Not many of my travelling companions had read it, but they all read the reviews on the plane back, lounging around on the overnight flight in their pyjamas. (Want to see what other people’s husbands wear in bed? Go on an overnight flight with them.)
These reviews were far more uplifting than the reports of the game. I didn’t even read those, which is why it took me another week to discover why that penalty had been awarded. (Why can’t you tackle someone when he is up in the air?) Instead, I went to South Africa and back with my nose in Jeremy Pratt’s gripping 400-page tome The Private Pilot’s Licence Course: Navigation & Meteorology, now in its third edition, fourth reprint. Now that was really good value.
