THE BRITISH AND Irish Lions had a difficult job on their hands in 1938 when they toured South Africa.
The Springboks had earned their first-ever series win in New Zealand the year before. With an incredibly powerful, brutal pack and their quick backline, they were the best team in the world.
The South Africans hammered the Lions in the first two Tests in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth, from where the two sides boarded a ship to Cape Town for the final Test, a dead rubber.
Onboard was the innovative Springboks selector Oubass Markötter, the Rassie Erasmus of his time. At his wits’ end, Lions captain Sam Walker, an Ireland international and Belfast native, couldn’t help sidling up to Markötter and asking for his advice ahead of the third Test.
Markötter was renowned for his ability to recognise talent and he had a simple solution to Walker’s woes.
“Play your Irish,” said Markötter.
Walker took the advice and started all eight of the Irish players on tour in the final Test. The Lions gave up a big early lead but then overhauled the mighty Springboks to win one of the greatest games played on South African soil. Driven on by their Irish core, the Lions showed that the Springboks were not invincible.
This is the tale that gave Michael Charton the title for his new show ‘Play Your Irish,’ which explores the interwoven stories of Ireland and South Africa through the prism of rugby.
“There is a huge amount of connection,” says Charton. “When I start a story like this, my intent is to create context for South Africans so that when they view the Test match, it carries meaning deeper than just the 80 minutes on the field.”
Charton will perform the story to an international audience on Zoom on Tuesday before live shows in Cape Town and Durban ahead of the second Test between Ireland and the Springboks. The event is in aid of the Players’ Fund, which supports South African players who suffer catastrophic injuries.
Charton is a storyteller. He hails from Cape Town and worked in finance until he took up a degree in history and realised that he knew nothing about South Africa and that no one else around him – doctors, lawyers, accountants – did either.
In 2011, he was telling a friend about the 1937 Springboks who won in New Zealand. Intrigued by the anecdotes, his friend asked if Charton would tell the story in a pub the night before a big Springboks Test against the All Blacks in Johannesburg. They hoped 10 friends would come but ended up with an audience of 200 people.
Within a few years, Charton made it his full-time job and though rugby is only one part of his work, he has since been in Springboks camp to tell them the story of the 1937 team, as well as creating shows about the All Blacks, French rugby, Welsh rugby, and now the relationship with Ireland.
Reconciliation is a big theme in ‘Play Your Irish.’ The Springboks’ World Cup success in 1995, with Nelson Mandela present the year after apartheid had been ended, was a momentous occasion for South Africa.
Charton says Irish rugby has played a similar role in its country’s healing.
“As a team, Ireland have always broken partition and the religious barriers by Ulsterman playing in the Ireland team. It has caused its own challenges but rugby has been a role model.
“The IRFU was never in doubt when it came to partition. They just said they were carrying on because they’d already overcome it. Irish rugby to me is a beacon of what reconciliation can be.”
Charton has dug into the history of Irish people in South Africa.
He talks about Irish nationalists who travelled to South Africa to fight against the British in the Anglo-Boer War, with John MacBride’s Brigade gathering huge support back in Dublin.
The history extends up to the 1990s when all sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland were invited to South Africa for reconciliation talks before the Good Friday agreement was signed.
Charton wants his South African audiences to feel a bond with Ireland, whose rugby history is explored in the story.
“The Irish played rugby for fun,” says Charton. “The English saw it as a way to build leaders to who lead the empire. The New Zealanders and Welsh played for national pride.
“In Ireland, it was a middle-upper class game and they played it for fun, its purest form you could say. They came with a certain freedom, they weren’t burdened by a whole lot.”
But their history with South Africa also demonstrates an uncompromising edge, including the notorious battle in Pretoria in 1998 when fists flew every few minutes.
“While the Irish do play rugby for joy and fun, they do not take a step back,” says Charton. “There’s a long history of Irish people with the spirits to stand up to the Springboks on the hard grounds of South Africa. The Irish have always stood toe to toe.”
Anthony Foley is someone who pops up in Charton’s story on several occasions, including when Rassie Erasmus heads to Ireland, and there are more historical Irish rugby figures front and centre.
Dublin native Tommy Crean toured South Africa with the Lions in 1896 and liked it so much he decided not to go home. He moved from Wanderers FC in Dublin to the Wanderers of Johannesburg and later fought for the British in the Anglo-Boer War.
“When Ireland won their first home championship in 1894, Crean was a big part of that team and he really helped me tell the story because he was the only Catholic on that team and he opened the game to more of that,” says Charton.
The extraordinary Paddy Mayne, a County Down man who was one of the founding members of the SAS, was on the 1938 Lions tour when he got up to all sorts of mischief in South Africa.
The great Willie John McBride, a three-time Lions tourist to South Africa, is another who features in ‘Play Your Irish.’
The show touches on the highly controversial Ireland tour to South Africa in 1981 during apartheid, which Charton has mixed feelings about now.
“Most of my life, the politics was clear cut to me: this tour should never have happened. But as I’ve got older, read more and thought more, I really don’t know. There were certainly upsides to it. South Africans were very insulated and these things which opened doors were important.”
Charton says he’s sometimes embarrassed when he sees Springboks fans making aggressive comments to other nations on social media, so he’s hopeful his story will shed a new light on how Ireland and South Africa are connected in so many ways.
“There is this overlap between Irish and Springboks values of late, this idea that there’s something bigger than the scoreboard,” he says.
“The fact that the Irish are such a great team now, it’s inevitable that there would be some tension. South Africa regard them as rivals, it’s a compliment.”
Find out more about ‘Play Your Irish’ here.
