I don't Know Anything About Rugby

After we went to the Lion Park outside Johannesburg, we went to a rugby game. One of the local teams is the Blue Bulls. I don't remember who they were playing. Rugby is a very popular game in South Africa. Rugby played a role in the end of apartheid. Here is an excerpt from a news article that quotes the South African national team captain François Pienaar about the events in 1995:

"During those six weeks what happened in this country was incredible," Pienaar said. "I'm still gobsmacked when I think back to the profound change that happened. We started obviously with a great leader with a fantastic vision who realised that sport is important for the Afrikaner white community and to earn their respect and trust.
"But on the other side I have such a respect for what he had to go through in the African National Congress because the springbok was a symbol of apartheid. The majority of South Africans never supported the Springboks, so to ask them to support them for the first time was a massive ask.
"Through the course of those six weeks, because he asked them and we came to the party in terms of playing good rugby and building a nice momentum towards the final, things happened in South Africa that were just magical."
For the final there were 63,000 people in the stadium and 62,000 were white. With a stroke of PR genius, Mandela appeared in the green-and-gold Springbok jersey and cap: "It's well documented that Mr Mandela walked out into Ellis Park in front of a predominantly white crowd, very much an Afrikaner crowd, wearing a springbok on his heart and how they shouted, 'Nelson, Nelson, Nelson!' because what he'd promised he delivered. And when the final whistle blew this country changed for ever. It's incomprehensible."
This part of South African history is immortalized in the movie Invictus with Matt Damon as François Pienaar, and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. I highly recommend seeing that movie.
In any case France who picked me up at the airport met us at the hotel to take us to Pretoria to the stadium. Now my coworkers had arrived in South Africa nearly three weeks before I did, and so they had gotten to know each other. Needles to say things were really awkward. We were standing outside the stadium with not much to say to each other and no place to sit. At some point I asked if we could use the tickets to go into the stadium and sit. One of my coworkers said we could, so I hi tailed it inside. There was some amateur league playing a preliminary game. That and the fact I now had a place to sit was priceless.
In any case watching the rugby game was fun. At some point I went to get a hamburger. 








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