There was a plan; it was a complicated plan but it was a plan for a bit fun on Saturday.
Myself, Corne and Elmi Taljaard were going to go to Loftus and watch the Vodacom Bulls face the Glasgow Warriors and then, this is where the planning comes in, head from Pretoria to the Johannesburg CBD to check out the Emirates Lions facing Cardiff, two for the price of, well two.
These were vital games in the United Rugby Championship #RaceToTheEight and it was going to be an adventure that we’d talk about at braais for years to come but it was complicated.
You see they live in Pretoria and I live in Joburg, so a lot of driving was going to be involved and someone was going to have to do an extra trip if we tried it in one car, which was the logical thing to do, although the logical logistics were tough.
Then there’s the issue of watching two games of rugby without having a beer or seven … Between the three of us, nobody could be trusted to get through this grand escapade without having a frosty beverage of some sort and that was a problem and we needed a solution.
The answer popped up on my Facebook randomly, a place in Pretoria, close to where they live, that is run by Lions legend Jaco Kriel, a hero to myself and Corne and one of the good guys of the rugby world.
Go Rugby Bar seemed like the ideal place to watch all the rugby, we would have missed the Hollywoodbets Sharks facing Benetton on our drive, so we booked a table and got ready for an epic day.
Little did I know how epic it would end up being, not because of the bad Karaoke (although our waiter Thabo was excellent), it was because after the Bulls had secured their win over the league leaders from Scotland, the waitstaff began to move some tables around for a big group.
This filled me with dread, I’m too old for crowded bars these days and I wanted to watch (as it turned out) the Shark's nail-biting loss and the Lions' scrappy win without some random wanting to out the football on ...
But I was wrong, this was a blessing as the Sanlam Boland Dames rugby team walked in, beaming from ear-to-ear.
The Dames had faced the Bulls Daisies that morning at Loftus, a game that I was extremely interested in as the two unbeaten teams in the Women’s Premier Division battled it out.
The Dames had lost but they had put on a magnificent showing, limiting the all-conquering Bulls to a 24-14 win, their tightest win in the history of the competition.
With both sides missing their Springboks it was end-to end stuff and both sides could leave the historic Loftus grass with their heads held high.
So why were the charming Dames at Go Rugby?
Because of that effort, because of that heart and because they are family the coaching staff has decided that they deserved more than the complimentary toasted sandwiches they were offered and they were now going to get "steak and burgers".
The side from the Cape aren’t as well funded as the Bulls and have to dig deep into their own pockets to play the game they love but with performances like they have delivered this season, they may be the hottest commodity in South African rugby right now.
When these two teams face off again, I plan to be watching and I hope you are as well.
But then again, sometimes planning is overrated ...
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