Very few now could master art of Joggie

CHRIS HEWETT

GUEST COLUMNIST

The way the old-timers tell it, the Springboks were so petrified by the majesty of the All Blacks’ attacking play in the build-up to the First Test in Pretoria – 50-odd tries in 10 matches against some of the most powerful provincial teams in the country – that they concocted a secret plan and disappeared behind the high walls and the razor wire of Baviaanspoort Prison, only a few miles out of town but effectively on a different planet, to work on it.

As the great New Zealand rugby scribe Terry McLean put it, “loud were the cries of rage from press and radio men” when they found that the only way of entering the jail to watch the South Africans training sessions was to get banged up themselves.

This was way back in 1970, when the two countries were in the thick of one of the greatest rivalries in the annals of international sport. And what was the Big Secret? It was a “who”, actually, and he went by the name of Joachim Scholtz Jansen, below, an uncapped centre from the Northern Cape. His friends knew him as “Joggie”. His opponents preferred other nicknames, none of them nearly so polite.

Come the day of his debut, Joggie immediately smashed Wayne Cottrell, the New Zealand outside-half, with an open-field tackle heavy enough to be measured in newtons, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

McLean described it as “terrible but fair” and added: “Cottrell dropped, out cold. Great was the courage of the man as he climbed back to his feet and into the game. Little the good of the act.”

New Zealand lost the match. Understandably distracted by the prospect of more Jansen rib-ticklers, they lost the series too. If they didn’t know Joggie from Adam before taking the field at Loftus Versfeld, they would not forget him as long as they lived.

So what, you ask? So this. It is still perfectly possible to “win the contact”, “dominate the collision”, “win the gainline” and all the rest of it in the way Jansen did all those years ago: that is to say, without applying shoulder to head at maximum speed and, in the same split-second, persuading another tranche of parents up and down the land that rugby is not the sport for their children.

Jansen’s point of contact with Cottrell was shoulder to waist, just as the New Zealander was shaping to pass off his left hand. Eye-wateringly destructive as it was – watch the footage on YouTube and try not to wince – it did not leave spectators wondering if this union lark was worth the hassle. Can we really say the same now, when we witness (as we do all too often) the kind of “tackle” inflicted by the Bristol centre Sam Bedlow on the Gloucester midfielder Adam Hastings during last weekend’s derby at Ashton Gate?

“Take the tackle height down to abdomen level and the benefits would be clear and obvious”

If the people running the sport had any sense –a moot point, agreed – they would lower the legal tackle height by midnight yesterday. And not by a bit, either. By a lot.

Take it down to abdomen level and the benefits would be clear and obvious. Not only might things be just a little safer on the neurological front, it would also be more difficult for defending teams to employ the ultra-aggressive brand of one high/one low double hit that has blighted the 15-man code ever since it started nicking ideas from its estranged 13-man cousin.

Believe it or not, there are influential rugby people out there who are prepared to argue, against the full weight of medical opinion and a steady stream of upsetting anecdotal evidence, that player welfare concerns are overblown.

Needless to say, they won’t be the ones on the pointy end of any concussion lawsuit that may or may not make it into court. (Those members of the governing class who do find themselves on a witness stand are unlikely to testify that when a player first applies his thumbprint to a professional contract, he also signs up to early onset dementia.) But with the stand-and-deliver hits continuing to attract popular support, the game has a serious problem.

Turn off: Sam Bedlow leaves the field after being sent off for his high hit on Adam Hastings inset

Concussion is hardly a new thing in the rugby context: the risk of it has always been part and parcel of fullcontact union and no one pretends otherwise. When Matt Perry, a wonderfully accomplished full-back and just about the only England player never to be run over by Jonah Lomu, said that the only way of stopping the outsized All Black was to “resign yourself to a mouthful of boot”, the inherent peril of tackling low was laid bare.

It is also important to stress that the number of true rugby lovers who want all such peril removed can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with at least four fingers to spare. But why go out of our way to make the sport more dangerous than it needs to be?

Rugby was hard in the age of Joggie Jansen and it’s hard in the age of Sam Bedlow. But there are big, big differences. At some point, we’ll have to decide which was better. And safer.