LUKE ALFRED | In praise of mongrel: from Cheslin Kolbe to Roy Keane

You don’t hear much about mongrel in modern sport anymore.

So, what is it? And where can you find it?

Mongrel — here’s a back-of-the-envelope definition — is equal parts indefatigability and contrariness. It’s something you probably can’t coach.

Genaro Gattuso, the cussed AC Milan and Italy midfielder, had mongrel, as did Roy Keane. You’ll note in my choice of examples that both give away my age; Keane and Gattuso transitioned to coaching, where they failed. This might tell us that mongrel has a toxic edge — and is difficult to reproduce off the pitch.

Talking of teams, the Springboks have mongrel aplenty. If his performance at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday evening was anything to go by, Eben Etzebeth seems to have found his after he temporarily mislaid it a week ago. But not only forwards have it. Cheslin Kolbe has it in abundance. He’s brave. He’s fiery. You need a bit of mongrel to tackle forwards twice your size.

There’s also mongrel elsewhere in our rugby. From Friday through to Sunday afternoon, the seventh — and final — round of the Currie Cup was played, with the final four places being taken by (in order) Griquas, the Cheetahs, the Pumas and the Lions, who squeaked into fourth to set up an away semifinal against Griquas in Kimberley at lunchtime on Saturday.

All four sides have a touch of mongrel, the kind of dog-with-a-bone woema that makes them difficult to play against and hugely enjoyable to watch. Take the Pumas and their coach, Jimmy Stonehouse. Jimmy — no disrespect here, Jimmy — looks like an extra from one of my favourite films of the last 20 or so years, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.

Starring a bloated, life-battered Mickey Rourke, the film tells the story of an ageing pro wrestler, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and his comeback trail. The odds are stacked against Randy because he wears a hearing aid and has a dicky heart, but you still want him to succeed and get his new life in a crippling headlock — as it were. The Wrestler is full of pathos, an articulate film about howling male inarticulacy. Bruce Springsteen provides at least some of the soundtrack, so you get the general vibe.

I mention Stonehouse because he, too, sitting in the coaching booth with his thinning hair and impressive biceps could, I think to myself, have found his way into Aronofsky’s film. As Pumas coach, Stonehouse is no stranger to stacked odds. He smiles neither for a try nor grimaces for conceding one. His most frequent facial expression is a slight adjustment of the lips. I’m not sure we can even grace it with the word “expression”.

By some fluke of scheduling, the Pumas played the Cheetahs, their Currie Cup semifinal opponents next Saturday, last Saturday. In their round-robin match, they won 52-26 in Nelspruit, eight tries to four, leading one to assume that they can repeat the victory in Bloem in the semifinal.

Assumption, however, is a dangerous thing in sport as well as life. A semifinal spins on its own logic, a logic that owes little to history and more to the moments in which it is played.

Stonehouse, the canny old practitioner that he is, knows this only too well. He knows that a Cheetah in his backyard can be a dangerous creature. But he also knows that in the skipper, eighthman Willie Engelbrecht, and flyhalf, Clinton Swart, he has two of the most decorated and experienced players in the Currie Cup, Engelbrecht captaining the side when the Pumas last won the tournament in 2022.

Both Engelbrecht and Swart have mongrel. And both know their way around a rugby field in the way they know their way around the cab of the glitzy bakkies I suspect both park on the edge of the Pumas training pitch.

After winning in 2022, the Pumas again reached the final the following year, where they lost it to the Cheetahs, so there’s a spicy edge to Saturday afternoon’s semifinal. While we all look forward to the third Test against the All Blacks, fine rugby players in Bloem and Kimberley will be going hammer and tongs at each other in the name of reaching the final.

There’s something more about mongrel. Contemporary sport is a little like wall-to-wall carpeting or muzak in the elevator — it’s everywhere; you can’t escape it. With this ubiquity, you can have a rather bland uniformity. No-one really says anything. There are no brawls or tantrums. Sportspeople generally behave well.

Some leave their on-the-edge behaviour for what they do on the pitch. It’s called mongrel. Watching All Blacks lock Fabian Holland, a player I don’t know much about, these past few weeks, I suspect that Holland has mongrel aplenty. Good on him. Sport without it is rather like watching the supertalented on their best behaviour. And who wants that?