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Smoke and mirrors fill the vacuum as Springboks and All Blacks brace for battle
South Africa welcome New Zealand for their Greatest Rivalry series with the suspicion that they plan on beating the tourists at their own game
The problem with Test weeks is that they can feel long. Cricketers can play for days on end, footballers every few nights, but rugby players step on to the international stage for just 80 minutes per week. The result is a drawn-out vacuum in the buildup and if it’s not a “war of words” unfolding, it tends to be head coaches ramming home their points to the referee.
We lap it up, of course we do as we wait for Saturday to come, and though the pre-match sparring between South Africa and New Zealand is tedious to some, it is all part of the fun to others. This week in Johannesburg has been lively without crossing the line into poisonous. Suffice it to say that the referee Matt Carley is in for one hell of an afternoon in Saturday’s series opener at Ellis Park but the very fact that both Rassie Erasmus and Dave Rennie have stepped on to the offensive demonstrates the magnitude of the coming four-Test series. It promises to be a barn-burner.
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Thin air and death threats: Why Ellis Park is the All Blacks' ultimate test
The cauldron, the cathedral, the mecca. Nothing in world rugby compares to the grand Ellis Park stage.
Wherever your vantage point this weekend, soak it in. Springboks-All Blacks tests at this stadium are the pinnacle, the greatest challenge any touring
team confronts.
From Twickenham to Stade de France and the Principality Stadium, there are vastly larger, more aesthetically striking, venues dotted throughout the rugby world.
No place, though, makes you feel more foreign, more of an outsider, than Ellis Park’s towering stands and hostile arena.
Fans gather outside the famed ground, in a notoriously treacherous Johannesburg neighbourhood, hours before kickoff to stoke their braais, feast on mounds of meat, beer and the favoured local brandy and Coke as they build to the crescendo of the occasion.
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