Punk Rock Rugby

On Rassie’s rolling mauls

“Uncle Charlie was addicted to underdogs. 
The more under, the more canine, the better.”

J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

I was twelve years old when I played my first game of koppestamp. I had played park rugby, touch rugby, tag rugby, six-down and full-contact rugby. Koppestamp was different. Those who complain about the sport’s complex set of laws will have no such gripes about koppestamp. 

Afrikaans for ‘headbutt’, our U13 rugby coach, Mr Powell, explained that the solitary law of the game was in the name — headbutts were verboten. One night I ran this by my mate from the Boland, Wilhelm, and he disagreed with this ‘interpretation’, “That must have been the Southern Suburbs version of the game.” 

It blew up immediately. We looked across sheepishly at Mr Powell waiting for him to intervene. Puggy Powell, as he was known up on the slope of Table Mountain at the UCT Rugby Club, loved the dark arts of forward play and was not bound by the teacher’s code. His whistle remained firmly in his pocket. He smiled.

He did eventually intervene, angrily asking us why neither team had initiated a single rolling maul. We had worked on our mauling in the previous weeks and he wanted to see us implement it. On his cue, we mauled and mauled and we forgot that we were at each others’ throats previously. A lady walking her dog along the Liesbeeck River may have wondered if this was a new form of team-building. In a sense, it was.

The rolling maul is an art form. Two packs of forwards aim to coordinate their collective power through a focal point to carry the ball upfield and generate momentum. If the defending team get a sense of where that attacking team’s planned incision lies, they counter-shove through that point and the attacking team needs to decide whether it can overpower it, or shift the focal point.

The “rolling” part of the maul refers to two things. First, when the maul is in full flight it trundles along as a singular unit, rolling its way up the pitch. Secondly, players join, disengage and rejoin the maul from the back, rolling in their positions. Where rugby’s scrum is a choreographed dance with specified positions and role-players, the maul is an unstructured, chaotic, interpretive dance in constant flux.

The Springboks are the modern masters of this interpretive dance, and have gifted the rugby-loving world a few in the previous World Cup so glorious that they will remain firmly in rugby folklore. Against Japan in the quarter final, the Springboks launched a 50m rolling maul which resulted in a try. In the final against England, the Springboks introduced a seldom seen open play maul which led to a penalty which extended the winning margin (see Squidge Rugby’s analysis of that move, or The Move, here).

Not everyone is as excited to see the men in green trundling up the field, whichever way they get there. “At some point, people will need to decide which type of game they want to watch,” said All Black coach, Ian Foster last week. Do we really need to decide which type of game we want to see? Isn’t the beauty of this oval-balled game the juxtaposition of styles that each nation brings to the table? 

To lean on the metaphor of football manager, Jurgen Klopp “(They’re) like an orchestra… But I like heavy metal more. I always want it loud.” While the Springboks may have relied on the heavy metal Bomb Squad in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2023 cohort has evolved into a different beast. 

It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s stripped down. It’s distorted. It may not be for everyone. And with Rassie Erasmus at the helm, it’s certainly anti-establishment. It’s Punk Rock Rugby.

The French have their champagne on ice. While on the outskirts of Paris, the unfavoured World Champions toil away ahead of this weekend’s epic. The underdogs bump heads with the upper crust. “The more under, the more canine, the better.” Rassie might say. He will be in a defiant mood, as he attempts to gatecrash the party once more.