Former Springbok captain and World Cup winning team manager Morne du Plessis has issued an interesting challenge to the men who will be the first to play a rugby match at the new Cape Town Stadium.
"Take a wager among yourselves without coming to any sort of behind the scenes arrangement on who will become the player who will make history by becoming the first rugby player to score a try at the Cape Town Stadium," said Du Plessis, who has been involved in the planning and conception of the new venue.
Du Plessis predicted that the new stadium will become one of "the iconic venues" at the Fifa World Cup later this year, and said he was glad that Saturday's Stormers/Boland Super 14 warm-up game was going to have the Cape Town Tens as a backdrop and be part of the annual rugby festival.
Tana Umaga and Tim Horan are two former greats who will be lining up in the International Legends Tens team to play against a South African Legends Tens team in the curtain-raiser to the Stormers game.
"I would not have got an opportunity to play at the venue otherwise so it is great that I have been able to get here this year and tick that one off," said Umaga at the pre-tournament press conference yesterday.
Most of the matches will be played at Hamiltons over the next two days, with the Tens event starting Friday and being concluded Sunday.
"I don't know if I will be the first player to score a try at Cape Town Stadium as I have to be selected by my captain first and you cannot score tries from the sideline," quipped Umaga.
"I think it will be down to who gets the ball first. I reckon there will be a lot of guys hanging on to the ball a bit longer in their quest to make history."
Horan, a former Wallaby international who was part of World Cup winning teams in 1991 and 1999, will captain the International team, which also includes another former Wallaby in Pat Howard as well as Zak Feaunati, who played Jonah Lomu in the Clint Eastwood epic, Invictus.
"Zak got hold of me to find out if I would be keen to play and obviously I know Bob (Skinstad) and Rob (Fleck) well from my playing days. There is a break in the French league season, so this season I am able to come out and enjoy the atmosphere after last year I had to regrettably turn the invitation down," Umaga said.
"It's great to get these opportunities to have a run after your playing career is over and I am particularly looking forward to playing with Tim at the tournament. I got to play him a lot when I was playing, but I never got to play in the same team as him.
"Obviously we would both be a lot slower now than in our playing days, but it should be fun."
Former players enjoy the Tens format in that, as organiser Skinstad has pointed out, it is not as taxing as sevens from an aerobic point of view and it is also not as physical as the 15-man format.
Teams will be in action all day today and tomorrow at Hamilton, with prizegiving scheduled for 6.30 tomorrow night.