South Africans united in condemnation of Boks

What you need to know:

  • It will take a while before many South Africans recover from Saturday’s 57-0 drubbing of their beloved rugby team the Springboks by world champions New Zealand, popularly known as All Blacks, in the Rugby Championship.
  • I have been in South Africa since Thursday and to say the loss, the biggest in the history of the Springboks, devastated the rugby-mad South Africans would be a big understatement.
  • The record overtook the margin of defeat which had been set in their 57-15 loss to New Zealand in Durban last year.

In Johannesburg

It will take a while before many South Africans recover from Saturday’s 57-0 drubbing of their beloved rugby team the Springboks by world champions New Zealand, popularly known as All Blacks, in the Rugby Championship.

I have been in South Africa since Thursday and to say the loss, the biggest in the history of the Springboks, devastated the rugby-mad South Africans would be a big understatement.

The record overtook the margin of defeat which had been set in their 57-15 loss to New Zealand in Durban last year.

The Springboks were roundly condemned for failing to score a single try or point against the all-conquering All Blacks in New Zealand. The World Cup quarter-finalists were blown away with relative ease and lost their first five line-outs in the match.

DOOM AND GLOOM

And there was doom and gloom among the rugby-mad South Africans.

On Sunday and Monday, the South African press and locals were united in condemning the big loss by the Springboks that also went down in history as the biggest by the 1995 Rugby World Cup champions.

“I’m so ashamed we did so poorly. For a team ranked second among Test-playing countries, that was unacceptable,” Riaz Sheik, a die-hard fan of the Springboks told me in Cape Town on Monday on the queue as I waited to check out of my hotel room in Cape Town to catch a flight to Johannesburg.

At Cape Town International Airport, I did not catch sight of people wearing the green, yellow and gold jersey of the Springboks, total contrast to Thursday when most people either had the Springboks’ green jacket or the team jersey.

“That was a match to forget,” a lady called Dladla told me in Johannesburg.

“The coach should be sacked,” she added.