A weekly look at the game's other talking points
THIS cursed Pandemic has taken us down some strange sporting avenues and one of the oddest yet emerged earlier this week when the Rugby Championship made the decision to stage the remaining four rounds of the 2021 tournament in Queensland, including two fixtures in far flung Townsville.
The theory is that these sun-drenched regions boast the unusual combination of being thousands of miles from the rest of civilisation while at the same time possessing an inordinate number of excellent hotels serving the local surf spots and Great Barrier Reef tourism industry.
Matches will be shared between the Suncorp Brisbane, the Cbus stadium in Robina further south on the Gold Coast and the Queensland Country Bank stadium in Townsville, a venue you may remember as the gloriously named Dairy Farmers Stadium from RWC2003.
The schedule has been put together at short notice, but the fixture that draws the eye and will surely dominate Rugby's SANZAAR summer sojourn in Queensland is the 100th ever meeting between South Africa and New Zealand. And that, rather incongruously, will be held as the curtain raiser for the Australia-Argentina game at Townsville which will involve a dawn rise for TV fans back in South Africa.
Yes, the 100th clash between the two greatest rugby superpowers for exactly 100 years since they first met in 1921 will be held in a tropical Townsville which is nearer to Papua New Guinea than Brisbane.
It will nonetheless be a clash to remember, whether it can be played in front of a crowd of not, and will be the focal point of the last four rounds of this year's Rugby Championship and will surely garner the biggest global TV audience. Having won the World Cup and defeated the Lions all that is needed to complete South African joy is a good win over the old enemy to underline their number one world ranking.
Townsville will be the 24th venue for this clash of giants with the first ever meeting being at Carisbrook Dunedin on August 13, 1921. The Kiwis won that game 13-5 but the Boks won 9-5 at Eden Park while the tour ended with a 0-0 draw in Wellington.
Which pretty much set the trend when their big clashes revolved around tours –that particular chapter in rugby history ended with New Zealand winning five series, South Africa five and two drawn. Not a fag paper between them.
In modern times and especially in the Tri-Nations and Rugby Championship, New Zealand have drawn ahead and now, overall in terms of individual Test matches, it is 59-36 to New Zealand with four games drawn.
Eden Park has been a Kiwi citadel with seven wins, two draws and just the one defeat while Dunedin has also been a stronghold with a 7-1 winning record for New Zealand. The Wellington Regional stadium – the Cake Tin – is not far behind at 6-1 but the old much revered Athletic Ground wasn't such a fortress with honours even at three wins apiece and one draw.
In South Africa, the Boks have been at their most formidable at Ellis Park with a 9-5 win record which included the 1995 World Cup Final. Kings Park Durban is 5-4 to the Boks but Newlands has seen them lose seven with only three wins. The biggest surprise though is Loftus Versveld, the very heart of Afrikaner rugby in Pretoria which has only ever witnessed one Boks victory over the old enemy. And five defeats!
