A day at Loftus

BUSINESS DAY, 2 AUGUST 2001

AH, AND WHAT a day it was. The afternoon was warm and bright, the air was so clear you could barely see it, and so thin that if you ran up the stairs to get to your seat, your lungs burnt as though they had been filled with braai-lighter fluid. Not that I attempted anything so foolishly energetic as running up the stairs to get to my seat.

Outside the stadium was the fine aroma of boerewors rolls and ketchup and expectation; inside was the stirring sight of men wearing green wigs and caps with Springbok horns and moustaches dyed with the colours of the South African flag. It was a grand day to be in Pretoria, and when the Springboks ran out, the roar of the Loftus crowd was enough to lift you off your chair and into the air, as though you were an empty chip packet borne aloft by the hot gust of men’s hopes. I had never been to Loftus Versfeld before, and after last Saturday I may never go again. It can only ever be downhill from here.

I arrived with certain expectations of what a rugby test in Pretoria would be like, but I was surprised. The Loftus crowd is a curious one. Sure enough, as I arrived in the parking lot some beefy fellow in blue rugby shorts was unfurling a large old SA flag from the back of his bakkie. I paused to frown and tut, but as I watched he unfurled an equally large new SA flag, and walked happily toward the stadium with a flag in each hand.

It was an auspicious beginning. I found my seat on the grandstand and settled down to watch the curtain-raiser. Five rows in front of me, what I can only describe as a tour bus of Japanese rugby fans arrived. There were 17 or 18 of them, all wearing matching sunglasses and Springbok-green golf shirts and fanning themselves with official match programmes. My word – I couldn’t help thinking – they do take these cultural tours literally nowadays. It was an unworthy thought. I felt even worse about thinking it when a mountainous fellow behind me, sipping from a two-litre Coke bottle that had been diluted with some sort of fiery liquor – call me a purveyor of stereotypes, but I am guessing brandy – stood up and called out in Afrikaans: “Excuse me, if you’re looking for the Hong Kong Sevens, I think you may have taken a wrong turn off the N1.”

The group looked at him blankly, but his friends did not. The mountainous fellow sat down with the contented air of someone expecting applause, but his friends were not amused. A furious war of Afrikaans words broke out behind me.

“What do you want to go and say something like that for?” demanded one hardly less mountainous friend. “That was just rude, and furthermore Hong Kong is in China, you dummy,” said another. (You will forgive me if my translation from Afrikaans lacks something of the warmth and colour of the original. There were certain words spoken that simply cannot be translated into English. And should not be, even if they could.)

The first mountainous fellow tried to defend himself. “I was just joking,” he said, “and they don’t even speak the language.”

But he was getting nowhere. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was like having the Drakensberg range suddenly start quarrelling above you while you are out for a pleasant stroll in the country air. But the story had a happy resolution. Half an hour later, as I came staggering back from buying beer, I noticed the original mountainous fellow buying biltong from a vendor. He was shelling out R15 a packet for 17 or 18 packets. As I watched, he winched himself to his feet and trekked down the concrete stairs to the row of rugby fans. He handed them the biltong and made his apologies, then trudged back to his seat, still blushing beneath his whiskers.

“That’s better,” said one of his friends as he sat down again. “Now we can enjoy the game.” Boy, did we ever.