The early days

The early days of South African Rugby

It's the first week of July 1891.
There is a earthquake in San Fransisco so strong that acording to reports, it's altered the course of the Colorado River and parts of Prussia is hit by a heavy tornado. Chili is in the mids of a civil war and in India, press censorship is instituted while Lisbon sufers a finansial crisis.
But the people of Cape Town has more important things to do in this first week of July 1891 and is little worried about what happens in the rest of the world. They are to busy preparing for the arival of the first international rugby team to visit Southern Africa.

Rugby has already been played in this part of the world since about 1860 and by 1889 the game was already well established - so much so that the South-African Rugby Board has already been formed as the governing body. After some negotiations with the English Rugby Union the plan was aproved for the visit of W.E (Bill) Maclagan and his team of twenty men to play South Africa for the first time. The Dunottar Castle arived in Cape Town after a journey of 16 days, which in those days was seen as a fast time. Shortly after their arival Maclagan took his men to loosten their limbs after the long sea journey. The huge amount of spectators were impressed with what they saw. The Cape Times had this to say about Bill Maclagen: "He has acquired the acme of perfection as a tackler, can punt with considerable ability and with either foot, and can cover the ground at a splendid pace..."

The touring teams' first match was against the club Hamiltons wich they won 15 - 1. The only trie by the home team and the first trie in an international match by a South African team was scored by Charles (Hasie) Versveld whose brother is the more famous Loftus Versveld after which the huge Northen Transvaal stadium in Pretoria was named. This first historical trie as described by The Cape Times: "Versveld found an opening, put in a grand sprint and scored a trie for Cape Town amidst tremendous cheering. Duff took the kick but failed to announce the major points."

South Africa first entered the international rugby arena when the national team played their first match againt the Brittish Lions on Thursday, 30 July in Port Elizabeth. Not very much is known about the first captain, Herbert Hayton Castens. He has the unique achievement that he was the first captain of the South African national team and in 1894 he was also the captain of the South African touring Cricket team to England. Acording to the cricket year book Wisden he was born on 23 November 1864 and died on 18 Oktober 1929 in London. Castens recieved his school education at the famous school of Rugby and later graduated from Oxford. Shortly after that he came to South Africa where he did much to promote rugby in the Western Province area. In the rugby test he was constantly at the forefront of the forwards' charging runs in a match that was mostly faught out under the forwards. Unfortunately for them the Brtitsh backs played a much more rounded game and Aston and Whittaker each atcheived a trie wich was goaled by Rotherham. The final score was 4 - 0 for the Brittish visitors and all the points was scored in the first half.

Now it's 1996 and the Springboks is a totaly different team from the one who played in those very early days more than a hundred years ago. Since then they have toured all over the world and acheived many victories of wich we can be so very proud. Most noteably of those must be the Rugby World Cup final which placed them right on top of the world as the best of the best.

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