The Italian job: Laying the ghost of 2016

When the fixtures for 2025 were announced, a few Springbok supporters expressed disappointment at an ostensibly easier run of home games, when compared with the opposition the team faced last year. But I’m really looking forward to the games we have lined up, and in particular, to seeing the Boks face Italy on home soil, something they haven’t done since 2013.

For starters, Italy and Fiji are the only two current top ten teams that I haven’t seen live, so I’m really looking forward ticking Italy off that list this year. Their fans and players are also so passionate, much like South Africans, and with a large Italian community in South Africa, I’m sure the atmosphere is going to be incredible for these games. There’s also a much deeper reason for me really looking forward to finally seeing the Boks take on Italy in the stadium. It’s a bit of a trauma watch.

That sounds ridiculous when you consider the Springboks’ record against the Azzurri. The two sides first met in 1995, and have played each other 16 times. The Boks have won 15 of those clashes (seven at home, seven in Italy, and one in Japan during the 2019 Rugby World Cup), with some exceptional score lines. The most impressive of these was a 101-0 annihilation in Durban in 1999. But despite all of that, the game that lingers in my mind is that one out of 16 that they lost.

Let’s travel back in time, shall we, to a period that most Springbok supporters would frankly prefer to forget. The year is 2016. The Springboks have embarked on their end of year tour on the back of numerous defeats. Even so, and despite a 37-21 loss to England the week before, most fans would have woken up on the morning of 19 November feeling fairly confident. By the time the final whistle went in Florence, all of that confidence would be gone, and hearts would be broken. Now, I can handle a loss. In fact, I tend to cry far more often after big victories than after losses. I had been in the stadium in Durban just a month previously, when we lost 15-57 to the All Blacks, and didn’t shed a tear, or feel anywhere near as devastated as I did that day in November. But the 20-18 loss to Italy destroyed me. That’s no disrespect to the Azzurri, who fully deserved the victory. It’s not about the scoreline, or the history between the two teams, or the fact that at the time, the Boks were ranked 4th in the world, while the Azzurri were ranked 13th. As I sat on my couch and stared at the TV in stunned disbelief, I felt I was at the low point of my Springbok supporting career. Not, as I say, because of the result, but because I had never seen the team look so utterly defeated and dejected. I did cry after that loss, but it was because of what the loss represented, more than the actual defeat itself. Those were very dark days.

Of course, we went on to beat Italy the next year, and comprehensively at that, racking up a nice 6-35 result in Padua. You’d think the ghost had been laid to rest. But when the 2019 Rugby World Cup rolled around, and we faced Italy in our third pool game, I was nervous. We had lost our opening game to New Zealand, and a second loss to Italy would have sent the Boks home. A pool stage exit has never happened to the Boks before….but nor had a defeat to Italy until 2016. My brain told me that this was different, but my poor little heart had yet to recover from that terrible day. And anything can happen in a World Cup. In the end, it was a game characterised by uncontested scrums, ill-discipline from the Italians, and a double tip tackle on Duane Vermeulen that saw Wayne Barnes make the strange choice to only red card one tackler, Andrea Lovotti, leaving his accomplice, Nicola Quaglio, free to continue the game. What it wasn’t, was an upset, and the Boks emerged 49-3 victors.

Check out the latest episode of the podcast!

Since then, we’ve only played Italy once, on 19 November 2022, exactly six years after that traumatic defeat. I happened to be in hospital at the time, recovering from the genuinely near-death experience of a post-travel DVT. But you can rest assured that I watched that game from the relative comfort of my hospital bed, hopped up on painkillers, but still nervous enough not to be willing to miss a minute. The trauma runs deep, apparently. Another comprehensive victory ensued (21-63), and surely now…surely now I can relax when it comes to the Azzurri?!

Maybe so. Anyone who knows me knows I’m never fully relaxed about any Springbok games. It doesn’t do to be too cocky. And clearly I am way too emotionally invested either way. But I am really excited to see these two teams go up against each other at Loftus on Saturday. Like I said, I think the game and the atmosphere will be electric. There are still seven players in the current Springbok squad who were part of the matchday 23 on that fateful day in November 2016: Willie le Roux, Damian de Allende, Vincent Koch, Lood de Jager, Bongi Mbonambi, Franco Mostert, and Faf de Klerk (nine if you include Pieter-Steph du Toit and Trevor Nyakane, who are still in the Bok mix but unavailable due to injury). All of them exceptional players who have come out the other side of that unfortunate period of Springbok history without being defined by it. It’s probably time for me to put that trauma behind me too, and rewrite that ghost story with a suitable fairytale ending. In truth, it's little more than a niggle now. But as the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova once said, “Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.” It’s just that for me, that recurring dream has had the faintest undertone of nightmare to it…