CHRIS THURMAN: Advertisers, let’s not drag the Boks back to 1995

It’s not every day that you encounter your sporting heroes in person, so I did a double-take when I saw Handré Pollard at the shops this week. He was supposed to be in Auckland preparing for a crunch Test match against the All Blacks. Besides, it was 10am on a Tuesday, and while I know that the Springbok flyhalf loves his “Brannas en Coke”, it seemed odd that he should be hanging out in the Checkers LiquorShop.

On closer inspection, this Handré was just a cardboard cut-out promoting a new in-house product, Invictus VSOP Cape Brandy. The label on the bottle bears the closing couplet from William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem: “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” A classy brandy, a good-looking guy in a suit, a bit of poetry … why was I so annoyed?

Don’t get me wrong; Pollard can advertise what he likes. When, during the Springboks’ famous victory over France in the quarterfinal of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, Bongi Mbonambi told him that he was about to aim a 52m penalty kick at the posts “for SA”, Pollard took on the full weight of that statement. Then — as only sporting greats can — he put it out of his mind entirely, along with every other consideration in the world, and nailed it.

For that, and for many other moments in the green and gold, Pollard has my eternal gratitude. So do the rest of the class of 2019 and 2023, most of them (astonishingly) still playing at the top level and aiming to lift the Webb Ellis trophy again in 2027. I wish them well in their off-field business ventures, alcoholic or otherwise.

Is Steven Kitshoff and Malcolm Marx’s Bomb Squad Lager a fine craft beer? Maybe. Would I drink it even if it tasted like stale Carling Black Label at three times the price, just to feel closer to these warm-hearted, brave, modest men? Yes, I would.

Ditto Mbonambi, Ox Nché and Trevor Nyakane’s Bomalumz wines and coffee. The three “uncles” have taken a playful approach to selling their range, with various in-jokes for rugby fans to appreciate (in addition to recommended pairings for Kantlyn sauvignon blanc and Dark Arts red blend, there is a veto: no salads allowed). I don’t begrudge these heroes trading on their status as much-loved, familiar figures who also occupy permanent places in the pantheon of SA sport.

Booze, cars, insurance — fine. I draw the line at being a poster-boy for the socioeconomic blight that is the sports betting industry. But that’s a topic for another day.

Back to Pollard: you don’t have to be a marketing genius to figure out the not-so-subliminal association that the folk at Invictus VSOP Cape Brandy had in mind with Pollard as their ambassador. Because Invictus is also, of course, the title of a certain film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Hollywood heavyweights Morgan Freeman (as Nelson Mandela) and Matt Damon (as Francois Pienaar). A brandy called Invictus being touted by a Springbok icon inevitably recalls the 1995 mythology of rugby and the rainbow nation.

While based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy, which is guilty of rhetorical overreach (“the game that made a nation”) but is generally accurate, the film inserts a dose of fiction. For one thing, while Mandela greatly admired Henley’s poem, he did not use it to inspire Pienaar and company. For another — unsurprising given its intended audience Stateside — the political and historical oversimplification does a disservice to the subject matter.

South Africans have long moved on from this lack of nuance in understanding our collective post-apartheid triumphs and tragedies. But we do love our sport, and this makes us susceptible to reductive takes about its role in our national story.

The 2019 moment was different. Chasing the Sun, the excellent docuseries about that campaign, set a high bar for sporting narratives. Invictus is a paltry film by comparison: the writing is thin, the acting is of mixed quality, the execution of on-field sequences is appalling.

It’s probably impossible to give the current generation of Springboks adequate cinematic treatment. But let’s not drag them back to 1995.