I love the SuperSport soccer series on the history of the Soweto Derby. I have watched many of the matches in the last 30 years, but it is the storytelling and the revisiting of the glorious match-ups from earlier days that has been as enchanting as it has been educational.
Rugby needs more of this kind of storytelling, and the modern day supporter or even the generation of supporter who loves the rugby for the social occasion as opposed to the nuances of the game, would benefit from the romance of wonderful storytelling about the great matches and the iconic players who gripped the imagination and produced the spectacular to the backdrop of radio commentary and then finally television visuals.
I always preferred the thrill of the radio voices, as it allowed my mind to interpret the very detailed nature of every moment described.
As a youngster, I was seduced by the raw power and try-scoring ability of Danie Gerber, who — because of South Africa’s sporting isolation — played just 24 Tests in a 12-year Test career that started in 1980 and ended in 1992, when the Springboks officially returned to international rugby.
Gerber was a remarkable player and, if the YouTube visuals are impressive, they can never tell the full story of seeing him play live.
The darling of Despatch was brutal in the way he destroyed defences but there was also a grace about his running style and a natural awareness of space. He scored plenty of tries for a midfielder but he created many for his outside backs.
His pass to Carel du Plessis at Twickenham when a Southern Hemisphere invitational beat the best of the then Five Nations was the equal of what a wizard produces with a wand. Getting the ball near the touchline, Gerber instinctively went on a run that was more lateral than forward, but it was to find the space for the rampaging Du Plessis’s perfectly timed running line.
Du Plessis would glide for 50 metres to score a try of the Hall of Fame variety — but the pass was as good in telling you about the rugby quality of Gerber.
Having grown up watching Gerber from the stands or on television, I was fortunate, in my early years on the Western Province rugby beat, to be one of those voices telling the story of his final playing years in South Africa.
Gerber’s hat-trick against England in 1984 at Ellis Park and double against the All Blacks at Ellis Park in 1992, are among his more telling individual international statistics — scoring 19 Test tries and kicking one conversion.
In those final years, he was still doing the business on the wing against some of the finest young talent in South Africa, some of whom were in nappies when he made his senior provincial debut.
Gerber was officially inducted in World Rugby’s Hall of Fame in 2015, which is the measure of his impact when he did get to play Test rugby in the 12 years that defined his international playing career. He turns 67 in the next few months but I, for one, never think of him as anything but the player who sparked it all on the field. The imagery is of him scoring and creating tries and not of a retired player on the horizon of the 70s.
He was a remarkable player and, if the You Tube visuals are impressive, they can never tell the full story of seeing him play live.
In an era where rugby was an amateur sport and exclusively played in the winter, his longevity saw him pass 200 provincial and Test matches, including 115 for Eastern Province, 40 for Western Province and 24 for Free State.
Gerber, in interviews, always credited his love for soccer and playing soccer at an early age for his strength in leg movement as a rugby player, and the irony of that was not lost on me when thinking about his exploits while watching a soccer series on the Soweto Derby.
Rugby, in South Africa, has so much history, on both sides of what was the racial divide, before 1992’s national unification. Stories have been told, but the storytelling of those heroes must never stop.
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