Post by Scott on Oct 14, 2007 20:45:12 GMT
From The Times:
Bryan Habana has been a headline act in France. But if not for his father, he may have ended up starring in a whole different ball game.
Some stories are worth the detour; this one takes us from the Porte de St Cloud on the eve of the World Cup semi-finals in Paris, to the Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, in the summer of 1980, where a young man stands in an enclosure marked “Blacks Only!” at the northern end of the ground. The fourth and final Test between South Africa and the British and Irish Lions is about to begin and Bernie Habana can feel his pulse starting to race.
Bernie loves rugby. A talented lock, he plays for one of the teams in Johannesburg that caters for nonwhites and where one of the rules of the governing body – the South Africa Rugby Union – is a lifetime ban for members who attend the Springboks games. For Bernie it was a real dilemma: should he follow his head and support the boycott or follow his heart and travel to Pretoria? He followed his heart.
“It was obviously wrong of me to go,” he recalls, “but I absolutely loved the country and went in all honesty to support the Springboks.” He watched the game with a radio pressed to his ear so he could listen to the commentary. Bill Beaumont marched the Lions onto the field and into an early lead. “Most of the guys in our section were supporting the British Lions and hoping the Springboks would lose,” Bernie recalls. “I didn’t want that. I wanted the country to do well. We had got literally thumped by Willie John McBride in the ’74 series but Billy Beaumont’s Eighties side were not nearly as good and we had already won the series by the time Loftus came around.”
He drove home to Johannesburg that night, disappointed by the result (the Springboks lost 17-13) but warmed by the glow that coursed through his veins whenever he watched sport.
It wasn’t to last. A snitch from the governing body had spotted him in the crowd. Bernie Habana had played his last game of rugby. He was banned for life. But his passion for the game never wavered.
Eight years later, during a visit to England in the summer of 1988, he decided that he had to see Twickenham. He took a train out to Richmond and was struggling to find the ground when he happened upon a kindly lady from the Rugby Football Union who offered him a personal tour. “It was real heaven for me,” he says. “It reeked of history. They switch on the music – the English national anthem – and play ‘Swing Low’ as you come up the tunnel. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising! I probably spent three- quarters of a day there. It was my first visit to Twickenham and I was in absolute awe.”
He never dreamt that his son would one day play for the Springboks. He never imagined that day would be at Twickenham. He never dreamt the boy would score within seconds of making his debut or that he would witness it from the stands with tears rolling down his face. And that his boy would be billed as the headline act of a World Cup in France? No, he would never have dreamt of that. But that’s where Bernie finds himself on this Friday afternoon in Paris on the eve of the semi-finals. Wonderland.
Bryan Gary Habana always dreamt of being a star. A football star. His parents had named him after two Manchester United players – Bryan Robson and Gary Bailey – and he spent most of his boyhood dreaming of Old Trafford.
“I was big on soccer as a kid,” he says. “I played at primary school and for a club outside school and was a big Manchester United fan and my dad and my mum supported us in everything we did. I didn’t know what apartheid was; I grew up in a family where colour didn’t matter, so I had black friends, Indian friends, white friends. . . I was brought up in a safe haven where everyone was seen to be even.”
Rugby wasn’t on the radar. For the first 12 years of his life he knew more about Hulk Hogan than he did about rugby and his father rarely spoke about his playing days or the injustices he had endured. But the summer of 1995 changed everything. It started when his father pulled him from school one afternoon – “the first time he ever took me from school” – and announced they were going to Cape Town to watch the Springboks play Australia in the opening game of the World Cup.
Thirteen months had passed since the country’s first free elections and the sporting landscape had changed utterly since the Lions last visit in the Eighties: a new flag, no segregation, and no looking over your shoulder to check who was watching.
“As we were walking to the ground at Newlands,” Bryan recalls, “we stopped by this old church where a guy was painting faces and my dad had my face painted with the new South African flag. The atmosphere was incredible. I still didn’t appreciate or understand the game but I’ll never forget when Joel Stransky scored the try. There was this [white] guy sitting in front of us and he had also had his face painted.
“He turned around, crying with joy, and he gave my dad this huge hug and left a print of his face on my dad’s jacket. It didn’t matter where you came from or what colour you were. The euphoria of that moment, of being proudly South African, was incredible.” The good times rolled for over a month and when South Africa reached the final at Ellis Park, Bernie secured two of the best seats in the house. . . or at least that’s what it said on the ticket. . .
“We arrived to watch the opening ceremony,” Bryan recalls, “and our seats were taken. We chose the next available but there was this big guy sitting in front of me so I got passed along until I had a better view. Here I was, a coloured boy sitting on a white man’s lap, enjoying the rugby. It was a small detail that I will never forget and it started something inside of me.” That something was a spark for rugby that would soon transform him into one of the most exciting players the game has ever seen. The month is November 2004: nine years have passed since his passion was ignited and he has been selected on the bench for the Springboks visit to Twickenham.
“I’ll never forget the feeling of the grass and the dew and how cold it was – after the game I couldn’t feel my hands or my toes and had to put my hands in warm water for five minutes to get some feeling back. . . But that feeling of pulling a Springbok jersey over your head for the first time, and going out to represent a country that has 45 million people, was almost indescribable. I remember running down to the corner to warm up and the people in the crowd shouting. I got undressed and as I was about to run out my team manager called me back and said, ‘You can’t go out on the field like that!’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’ve still got your beanie on your head’.
“So here I am, 21 years old, and I’m on and almost immediately Jaco [van der Westhuyzen] breaks the line; I was so eager I almost got in front of him and when I got the ball I knew nothing was going to stop me. It was incredible. I had never played on the wing before and I find myself scoring a try with my first touch of international rugby. And to score against England at Twickenham! The home of rugby! The world champions!”
“It reads like a fairytale,” I suggest. “It feels like a fairytale,” he agrees. “The whole lot of it; I definitely think there is a greater force writing this fairytale; that the man upstairs has designed this map for me.”
He sits back in his chair and lists some of the wonders of his past six years. . . The hat-trick of tries against New Zealand at the Under21 World Cup. . . The 15 tries in his first 14 Tests for the Springboks. . . The IRB nominations (two) for World Player of the Year. . . The tries scored for the Bulls in the Super 14. . . The tries (six) scored so far in this World Cup. . . The prospect of reaching a World Cup final?
“We are not thinking about the final,” he insists. “Argentina have been playing really excellent rugby from the first game [of the tournament] against France. The one thing we don’t want to do is look back and say ‘if only’. We are not looking beyond this game.”
A smile crosses his lips. The thought is left unspoken.
What if they do it? What if the best is yet to come?
Five weeks have passed since the team left South Africa and he has embraced every moment, quizzing the team’s liaison officer, Philippe, about all things France, visiting the sights of Paris with his girlfriend Janine and recording the adventure nightly in a journal he keeps in his suitcase.
“I started the day we got here,” he explains. “I write something every day about the memories and what happened. . . It’s not for publication or anything like that; it’s just for me, personally. I’m not taking anything for granted, this is my first World Cup but it might be my last, and as much as photos can speak a thousand words, I think it’s good to write how you feel about the team and the environment and the things you experience.”
“I’ll pay you for it,” I announce. “No,” he smiles. “Name your price,” I insist, “I’ll give you anything you want.”
“No, there is stuff in there that is special to me.”
“Okay, we’ll compromise,” I say. “Just tell me what you really think of the games?”
“We had a tough opening game against Samoa,” he says. “They came out all guns blazing and for the first 30 minutes you weren’t sure what to expect but I think it was good for us to start off with such a physical contest; I think it prepared us for the rest of the tournament and the England game.”
“How important was it to beat England so emphatically?” I ask.
“Well, I think in terms of morale-boosting, we couldn’t have asked for anything better. It was nice to score 36 points but a lot better for us that we restricted them to scoring nothing. We wanted to make a statement. We wanted to show the rest of the world what we were capable of doing and everything clicked for us on the day. But the game will mean nothing if we don’t progress.”
“And what about your own performances?” I ask. “You came into the tournament as the headline act and potentially its biggest star. Does that bring an added pressure?”
“Well, you definitely want to become the best in the world,” he says, “but I’m not where I want to be yet. I’ve been playing okay but there’s plenty of room for improvement. It’s been a good four weeks for me but this World Cup is not about Bryan Habana, it’s about the Springboks and I’m just doing my best to make a contribution to this unbelievably special team. If we got to the 20th of October and there’s a cup in my hands, then I will say it was special.”
“Okay, last question: How did it feel to get a dose of your own medicine when you were smoked [by Takudzwa Ngwenya] in the USA game?”
“Ya,” he smiles, “credit where it’s due, he did really well. I had watched the games against Tonga and England and knew he was quick, but not that quick. I don’t think I have ever come up against anyone that quick. I gave him the outside gap and he beat me for pace and I knew when it happened that I was going to take some stick in the dressing room.”
“And have you?” “Ya,” he smiles, “there have been one or two chirps.”
Bernie in wonderland. It’s a Friday afternoon at his apartment near the Porte de St Cloud in Paris and he’s telling me about the horrors of Marseilles last week and the Fiji game. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy,” he says, “but at 20-all and one inch [the fantastic try-saving tackle by JP Pietersen] from being down 25-20, the pressure was starting to build. My wife and Fourie de Preez’s mum left and stood outside. They couldn’t take it. Our nerves were shot.”
After the game he returned to the team hotel and bumped into Butch James. “You know Mister Habana,” James smiled, “I don’t know how you guys were feeling at 20-all, but if it was even half of what we were feeling then I’m really sorry for you.” A few minutes later, Bryan arrived and greeted his dad with a kiss.
“So?” Bernie asked. “So,” Bryan replied. “So what do you think?” his father pressed.
“Oh, 37-20, it was easy man,” Bryan grinned.
But he knew he had put his father through the wringer. And Bernie is expecting more of the same this evening against Argentina in Paris. “It’s difficult to describe the pressure you feel when it’s your son playing,” he says. “You could take a trip on every rollercoaster in the world and ride them a thousand times and it wouldn’t prepare you for this. We are so close now and it means so much for the country. . . My nerves are jangling already.”
But he chuckles like an extremely contented man.
Bryan Habana has been a headline act in France. But if not for his father, he may have ended up starring in a whole different ball game.
Some stories are worth the detour; this one takes us from the Porte de St Cloud on the eve of the World Cup semi-finals in Paris, to the Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, in the summer of 1980, where a young man stands in an enclosure marked “Blacks Only!” at the northern end of the ground. The fourth and final Test between South Africa and the British and Irish Lions is about to begin and Bernie Habana can feel his pulse starting to race.
Bernie loves rugby. A talented lock, he plays for one of the teams in Johannesburg that caters for nonwhites and where one of the rules of the governing body – the South Africa Rugby Union – is a lifetime ban for members who attend the Springboks games. For Bernie it was a real dilemma: should he follow his head and support the boycott or follow his heart and travel to Pretoria? He followed his heart.
“It was obviously wrong of me to go,” he recalls, “but I absolutely loved the country and went in all honesty to support the Springboks.” He watched the game with a radio pressed to his ear so he could listen to the commentary. Bill Beaumont marched the Lions onto the field and into an early lead. “Most of the guys in our section were supporting the British Lions and hoping the Springboks would lose,” Bernie recalls. “I didn’t want that. I wanted the country to do well. We had got literally thumped by Willie John McBride in the ’74 series but Billy Beaumont’s Eighties side were not nearly as good and we had already won the series by the time Loftus came around.”
He drove home to Johannesburg that night, disappointed by the result (the Springboks lost 17-13) but warmed by the glow that coursed through his veins whenever he watched sport.
It wasn’t to last. A snitch from the governing body had spotted him in the crowd. Bernie Habana had played his last game of rugby. He was banned for life. But his passion for the game never wavered.
Eight years later, during a visit to England in the summer of 1988, he decided that he had to see Twickenham. He took a train out to Richmond and was struggling to find the ground when he happened upon a kindly lady from the Rugby Football Union who offered him a personal tour. “It was real heaven for me,” he says. “It reeked of history. They switch on the music – the English national anthem – and play ‘Swing Low’ as you come up the tunnel. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising! I probably spent three- quarters of a day there. It was my first visit to Twickenham and I was in absolute awe.”
He never dreamt that his son would one day play for the Springboks. He never imagined that day would be at Twickenham. He never dreamt the boy would score within seconds of making his debut or that he would witness it from the stands with tears rolling down his face. And that his boy would be billed as the headline act of a World Cup in France? No, he would never have dreamt of that. But that’s where Bernie finds himself on this Friday afternoon in Paris on the eve of the semi-finals. Wonderland.
Bryan Gary Habana always dreamt of being a star. A football star. His parents had named him after two Manchester United players – Bryan Robson and Gary Bailey – and he spent most of his boyhood dreaming of Old Trafford.
“I was big on soccer as a kid,” he says. “I played at primary school and for a club outside school and was a big Manchester United fan and my dad and my mum supported us in everything we did. I didn’t know what apartheid was; I grew up in a family where colour didn’t matter, so I had black friends, Indian friends, white friends. . . I was brought up in a safe haven where everyone was seen to be even.”
Rugby wasn’t on the radar. For the first 12 years of his life he knew more about Hulk Hogan than he did about rugby and his father rarely spoke about his playing days or the injustices he had endured. But the summer of 1995 changed everything. It started when his father pulled him from school one afternoon – “the first time he ever took me from school” – and announced they were going to Cape Town to watch the Springboks play Australia in the opening game of the World Cup.
Thirteen months had passed since the country’s first free elections and the sporting landscape had changed utterly since the Lions last visit in the Eighties: a new flag, no segregation, and no looking over your shoulder to check who was watching.
“As we were walking to the ground at Newlands,” Bryan recalls, “we stopped by this old church where a guy was painting faces and my dad had my face painted with the new South African flag. The atmosphere was incredible. I still didn’t appreciate or understand the game but I’ll never forget when Joel Stransky scored the try. There was this [white] guy sitting in front of us and he had also had his face painted.
“He turned around, crying with joy, and he gave my dad this huge hug and left a print of his face on my dad’s jacket. It didn’t matter where you came from or what colour you were. The euphoria of that moment, of being proudly South African, was incredible.” The good times rolled for over a month and when South Africa reached the final at Ellis Park, Bernie secured two of the best seats in the house. . . or at least that’s what it said on the ticket. . .
“We arrived to watch the opening ceremony,” Bryan recalls, “and our seats were taken. We chose the next available but there was this big guy sitting in front of me so I got passed along until I had a better view. Here I was, a coloured boy sitting on a white man’s lap, enjoying the rugby. It was a small detail that I will never forget and it started something inside of me.” That something was a spark for rugby that would soon transform him into one of the most exciting players the game has ever seen. The month is November 2004: nine years have passed since his passion was ignited and he has been selected on the bench for the Springboks visit to Twickenham.
“I’ll never forget the feeling of the grass and the dew and how cold it was – after the game I couldn’t feel my hands or my toes and had to put my hands in warm water for five minutes to get some feeling back. . . But that feeling of pulling a Springbok jersey over your head for the first time, and going out to represent a country that has 45 million people, was almost indescribable. I remember running down to the corner to warm up and the people in the crowd shouting. I got undressed and as I was about to run out my team manager called me back and said, ‘You can’t go out on the field like that!’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’ve still got your beanie on your head’.
“So here I am, 21 years old, and I’m on and almost immediately Jaco [van der Westhuyzen] breaks the line; I was so eager I almost got in front of him and when I got the ball I knew nothing was going to stop me. It was incredible. I had never played on the wing before and I find myself scoring a try with my first touch of international rugby. And to score against England at Twickenham! The home of rugby! The world champions!”
“It reads like a fairytale,” I suggest. “It feels like a fairytale,” he agrees. “The whole lot of it; I definitely think there is a greater force writing this fairytale; that the man upstairs has designed this map for me.”
He sits back in his chair and lists some of the wonders of his past six years. . . The hat-trick of tries against New Zealand at the Under21 World Cup. . . The 15 tries in his first 14 Tests for the Springboks. . . The IRB nominations (two) for World Player of the Year. . . The tries scored for the Bulls in the Super 14. . . The tries (six) scored so far in this World Cup. . . The prospect of reaching a World Cup final?
“We are not thinking about the final,” he insists. “Argentina have been playing really excellent rugby from the first game [of the tournament] against France. The one thing we don’t want to do is look back and say ‘if only’. We are not looking beyond this game.”
A smile crosses his lips. The thought is left unspoken.
What if they do it? What if the best is yet to come?
Five weeks have passed since the team left South Africa and he has embraced every moment, quizzing the team’s liaison officer, Philippe, about all things France, visiting the sights of Paris with his girlfriend Janine and recording the adventure nightly in a journal he keeps in his suitcase.
“I started the day we got here,” he explains. “I write something every day about the memories and what happened. . . It’s not for publication or anything like that; it’s just for me, personally. I’m not taking anything for granted, this is my first World Cup but it might be my last, and as much as photos can speak a thousand words, I think it’s good to write how you feel about the team and the environment and the things you experience.”
“I’ll pay you for it,” I announce. “No,” he smiles. “Name your price,” I insist, “I’ll give you anything you want.”
“No, there is stuff in there that is special to me.”
“Okay, we’ll compromise,” I say. “Just tell me what you really think of the games?”
“We had a tough opening game against Samoa,” he says. “They came out all guns blazing and for the first 30 minutes you weren’t sure what to expect but I think it was good for us to start off with such a physical contest; I think it prepared us for the rest of the tournament and the England game.”
“How important was it to beat England so emphatically?” I ask.
“Well, I think in terms of morale-boosting, we couldn’t have asked for anything better. It was nice to score 36 points but a lot better for us that we restricted them to scoring nothing. We wanted to make a statement. We wanted to show the rest of the world what we were capable of doing and everything clicked for us on the day. But the game will mean nothing if we don’t progress.”
“And what about your own performances?” I ask. “You came into the tournament as the headline act and potentially its biggest star. Does that bring an added pressure?”
“Well, you definitely want to become the best in the world,” he says, “but I’m not where I want to be yet. I’ve been playing okay but there’s plenty of room for improvement. It’s been a good four weeks for me but this World Cup is not about Bryan Habana, it’s about the Springboks and I’m just doing my best to make a contribution to this unbelievably special team. If we got to the 20th of October and there’s a cup in my hands, then I will say it was special.”
“Okay, last question: How did it feel to get a dose of your own medicine when you were smoked [by Takudzwa Ngwenya] in the USA game?”
“Ya,” he smiles, “credit where it’s due, he did really well. I had watched the games against Tonga and England and knew he was quick, but not that quick. I don’t think I have ever come up against anyone that quick. I gave him the outside gap and he beat me for pace and I knew when it happened that I was going to take some stick in the dressing room.”
“And have you?” “Ya,” he smiles, “there have been one or two chirps.”
Bernie in wonderland. It’s a Friday afternoon at his apartment near the Porte de St Cloud in Paris and he’s telling me about the horrors of Marseilles last week and the Fiji game. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy,” he says, “but at 20-all and one inch [the fantastic try-saving tackle by JP Pietersen] from being down 25-20, the pressure was starting to build. My wife and Fourie de Preez’s mum left and stood outside. They couldn’t take it. Our nerves were shot.”
After the game he returned to the team hotel and bumped into Butch James. “You know Mister Habana,” James smiled, “I don’t know how you guys were feeling at 20-all, but if it was even half of what we were feeling then I’m really sorry for you.” A few minutes later, Bryan arrived and greeted his dad with a kiss.
“So?” Bernie asked. “So,” Bryan replied. “So what do you think?” his father pressed.
“Oh, 37-20, it was easy man,” Bryan grinned.
But he knew he had put his father through the wringer. And Bernie is expecting more of the same this evening against Argentina in Paris. “It’s difficult to describe the pressure you feel when it’s your son playing,” he says. “You could take a trip on every rollercoaster in the world and ride them a thousand times and it wouldn’t prepare you for this. We are so close now and it means so much for the country. . . My nerves are jangling already.”
But he chuckles like an extremely contented man.
