Fiercest rugby rivals to clash in Charm City

Sport could end up doing more for positive relations with the USA than South Africa’s presidency, following the news that the world champion Springboks are to play fierce rivals New Zealand in Baltimore in September.

Maybe it is a good job that the sport of rugby barely registers on the US’s sporting radar, because if it were baseball and the proposed fixture reached a certain office in the White House, the Boks might have been tackled by red tape.

But it may well have come to even Donald Trump’s attention that in 2031 the USA hosts the Rugby World Cup, which is the third biggest sports gathering outside of the FIFA Soccer World Cup and the Olympic Games.

And this is why the two biggest rugby nations on the planet are playing a fixture in the Maryland city of Baltimore, nicknamed by Americans as “Charm City”.

Rugby’s international governing body, World Rugby, has placed the Springboks-All Blacks game in the States to try and charm Americans into supporting the World Cup they will be hosting.

The match forms part of the ostentatiously monikered “Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Tour that starts in South Africa in August. The All Blacks will play seven games around South Africa, including three Test matches against the Springboks, before the road show packs up and heads to Baltimore for a fourth Test that doubles as a marketing exercise.

While the USA has around 100 000 players registered in their rugby leagues, they are scattered across the vast country, and there are no rugby stadiums to speak of. Thus, the Springbok match is to be held at the home ground of the Baltimore Ravens, a National Football League team.

The M&T Bank Stadium is a 71000-seater, but filling it up should not be a problem given that there are over 130 000 homesick South Africans officially resident in the USA.

And first in the queue, surely, will be the few hundred Afrikaners that President Trump relocated to the Land of Opportunity…

There are also Americans who enjoy their rugby. After all, former President Bill Clinton took up rugby when he studied at Oxford University in England between 1968 and 1970.

The Springboks are not newcomers to the US. They first played a match there way back in 1981 in one of the most bizarre international matches ever played — it was the height of the apartheid era and American protestors did their utmost to stop the game. Eventually, the Test against the US Eagles was played at a secret venue — a Polo ground — in front of zero spectators.

The Boks were back in the States in 2001, again in trying circumstances. The 9/11 atrocity had occurred two months before the match in Houston, and security was off the scale.

More recently, in 2018, the Boks played Wales in an exhibition game in the States. It was Rassie Erasmus’ very first game in charge, and the Boks lost. From humble beginnings come great things…

That match was in Washington, and the red carpet was rolled out for the South Africans. But then it was only the second year of Trump’s first term as president…