Richmond in the Northern Cape is essentially a one-pub town. The pub is in Die Krip restaurant. I walked into the bar twice to order a beer, but it took me two weeks and a stop in Richmond on the trip home from the Western Cape to see that the bar had a special selling point.
“Have you been to the bar with the horse saddles for bar stools,” my actor mate Rob Hobbs asked me. He had been there for some work some time ago. “I think it’s called Krit or something.” I told him I hadn’t seen the saddles.
Last Friday we went there for a drink and for my wife to meet a friend she had never met before. “Is there a bar with saddles for stools?” I asked. They pointed inside. There it was. A six-horse-saddle bar in a one-horse, one-pub town. I sat on them. They weren’t an easy fit. The owner told me he doesn’t sit on them when watching cricket on the TV. They are a little hard on the groin.
They are incredibly cool, like Johnny Depp used to be, but you also wouldn’t want to spend too much time with them. They swivel a little. I met book-store owner John Donaldson in the bar that night.
When the owners of the Karoo Padstal and the place we were staying heard I was a sports journalist, they called him up and told him to come down to Die Krip. Richmond is that sort of town. Everyone knows everyone. When the extraordinary Modern Art Project gallery was closed on our trip down, they told us they could call the manager and get it opened for us. It was 7pm.
Donaldson was once a sports journalist, they thought. He wasn’t, but he had been around the game and knew some of the same people I knew. Donaldson left Joburg a good while back and came to Richmond. He owns the biggest book store in town.
Richmond has hosted Booktown Richmond every year since 2008. By 2014 they bragged they had more than 100,000 books in the town. That number may be less now. The pandemic has hit this town hard. Unemployment was always high, but poverty is more in your face in small towns. You can’t avoid it. You can’t wish it away to another part of town.
Donaldon makes some of his money selling sports memorabilia online. It’s a good gig, from the sounds of it, thriving.
“You can’t believe how much people want this stuff,” Donaldson told me. Rugby, was, naturally, very popular. It will perhaps be even more so now that the British and Irish Lions look to be on their way to SA.
This may be the most talked about tour and non-tour in the history of the Lions. The latest, from the Telegraph of London, is that 47,000 will be allowed in to watch Tests at the FNB Stadium, around half of its capacity.
Andy Marinos, once of these shores with SA Rugby, is now with Rugby Australia. He said he was “a little taken by surprise” the tour was going ahead. There are worries. The vaccine rollout is going about as slowly as Richie McCaw used to roll out of a ruck. But, there is a bank of knowledge on how to run an event in a pandemic. No doubt it will all be tapped, crunched and used well.
Carel du Plessis wanted to know if the “whole (Lions’) experience would be worth it”, which is a dreamy thing to say during a pandemic. I was in the US for the 1997 Lions tour when Du Plessis was coach, in a place called Redding, northern California. There was no live scoring on the interweb. I received updates on the Test via email from back home. The last read: “18-15 final score. Boks lose. A nation mourns.”
Almost 24 years have passed between Redding, northern California, and Richmond, Northern Cape. Much has, gladly, changed, much, sadly, has stayed the same.
This will be a Lions tour like no other. It’s been too long since we saw the World Champions play. It’s been too long since South Africans sat on the saddles of Die Krip and whooped and hollered. It’s been lonely in the saddle since the Boks played.
• McCallum is a former sports editor who has covered the Olympic Games as well as Rugby, Cricket and Football World Cups.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.