Invictus - Carlin [91]
They learned that there were fifteen players on each side; that eight of them were forwards and seven of them backs; that you got five points for a try—which meant transporting the ball physically over the goal line, as in rugby’s cousin sport, American football; that you got two points for a conversion—which meant kicking the ball between the two posts—again, as in American football; that you got three points for a penalty kick between the posts and three if, from loose play, you did the same with a dropkick—making contact between boot and ball on the half volley, at the precise instant it touched the ground. “But, just as important, we started to get a feel for rugby. We’d play touch rugby but we’d go for each other. Sometimes we’d really take each other out. That way we began to understand and, again, to our huge surprise, started actually to quite like the game.”
Images broadcast all over South African TV the day before a game against Canada began to persuade Moonsamy that perhaps he might start to quite like the Springboks too. The entire Springbok squad visited a small township called Zwide outside the big Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth. Scenes of huge white men chatting and playing with excited black children moved Moonsamy, as well as everyone else who saw them.
Some three hundred children gathered around a dusty field for a coaching clinic led by Morné du Plessis, who divided the boys up into groups of fifteen, but it was Mark Andrews who attracted all the attention: because he was so huge, and because he also happened to speak Xhosa. Balie Swart was there too, leading the children in passing routines, cheerfully revealing to their flabbergasted elders that big Boers could be friends too. That same evening Du Plessis took a group of players to a rickety stadium where local black teams played. There was a game on and Du Plessis felt it would be appreciated if the Springboks came along to watch. It was, thanks not least to James Small, whose blend of talent and notoriety made him the most recognizable face in the party. Small spent an hour and a half signing autographs, for adults and children alike.
When South Africa beat Canada 20-0 at Port Elizabeth’s Boet Erasmus Stadium, the whole of Zwide cheered and so did Linga Moonsamy. The next game, a quarterfinal game against the tough and talented Western Samoans, big Pacific islander folk fanatical about the game, posed what appeared to be a stiffer challenge. They also presented what ought to have been more of a test to black South African allegiances, since this was a dark-skinned team that they would have really gotten behind in the old days. Chester Williams took care of that, though, living up to what had appeared until now to be his somewhat inflated marquee billing by scoring four tries, or 20 points, in a 42-14 victory. “Whatever doubts I may have had about myself or the rest of the team or anybody else might have had about me disappeared that day—simple as that,” Williams recalled. “I got big support on and off the pitch from François and Morné and from now on I was, in the eyes of everybody, a fully accepted and respected team member. The whole story turned that day. The fact that I wasn’t white was now completely irrelevant.”
One week later was the semifinal, the one Mandela had mentioned in Ezakheni, against one of the pre-tournament favorites, France. The venue was to be Durban’s King’s Park Stadium, where Pienaar had made his Springbok debut two years earlier on the day after the Volksfront’s attack on the