INTERVIEW FRANCOIS PIENAAR: Johnny Wattersontalks to a legend who shared the same platform as one of the most charismatic leaders of modern times, Nelson Mandela
THE MORNING he got back from climbing Kilimanjaro, Francois Pienaar’s friend was waiting at his home in Cape Town with a smile on his face and a tandem bike. The Cape Argus Cycle Race, 109 kilometres long and with over 35,000 cyclists participating, takes the scenic route down the Cape.
It took Pienaar seven hours. Mechanical failures, he says. He was stiff for a week. But what’s a mountain, what’s a marathon? One time a tunnel-visioned rugby player, Pienaar has become a sort of unofficial face for South Africa’s conversion. Ellis Park; The 1995 Rugby World Cup; His captaincy; the aura of Mandela.
In Dublin with Ireland’s Jamie Heaslip to launch the Guinness Area 22 rugby website, Pienaar says his wife rang him earlier. “Twenty eight degrees in Cape Town,” he says with a grin. After years at Saracens the northern winter is no longer strange but still a little hostile to his tanned body.
Fifteen years after he found himself in the middle of something more than winning a rugby tournament Pienaar still looks the player. For Heaslip, though, the 1995 World Cup final was a lifetime ago.
“I was about 11 years old,” says the Irish number eight. “I just remember it all being down there, this big, colossal thing. I was a bit detached from it living in Zagreb, Croatia (his father was in the Army). I remember him (Pienaar) leading by example. I was so young . . . it was another game of rugby. Cool. The Word Cup. Deadly. I didn’t really know what was going on behind the scenes.”
For Pienaar, Joel Stransky’s drop goal meant his life would never be the same. The legacy of his World Cup-winning captaincy will endure longer than any other. “Yeah, my life definitely changed,” he says. “How? The unbelievable memories. That you’ve got no regrets. You’re just driving you’re car one day and you’re thinking back. It was something special. I would say the biggest change was that you stood on the podium and you lifted the cup.
“If you throw in our (South Africa’s) embarrassing past. If you throw in how our country came together over six weeks. If you throw in the most unbelievable leader of modern times and I had the privilege of sharing the same platform with him, it was special.
“When the ANC was in exile and when Mandeba (Mandela) was on Robben Island he actually wrote to all the other sporting bodies to boycott South Africa. It was a healing moment for a country.”
Pienaar was in the moment but he’s not one for standing still. By nature he’s a leader. He looks at the fractured nature of rugby competition in the Northern Hemisphere, the conditions in which players are asked to play and wonders why. When he was in England he presented a plan for a global season that put rugby on when the conditions were best.
The club owners then gave him a standing ovation. That was 20 years ago. There’s a wry smile when told Ireland’s squad session moved indoors on Thursday due to freezing conditions.
“You have competitions in the Northern Hemisphere that start in August, the Heineken Cup, and finishes in April. How do you follow that? It boggles my mind that you have two weeks and then switch off the engine just as it gets nice momentum. People flock to the games. It’s getting quite interesting and you switch it off and then try to restart it.
“The Southern Hemisphere plays in good rugby conditions. The game is a quicker game. The bog in December and January is just so difficult to play rugby in. You measure yourself then against the lowest common denominator because you don’t actually have to be that fit to be competitive.”
Heaslip is impressed. He had a chat with 43-year-old Pienaar earlier. He sprawls back: “Jeez . . . he’s a big man. I’d say he could still do a job for you for 60 minutes anyway.”
Probably. And after climbing the mountain.
