PRETORIA—There’s a drink here in South Africa that they call “creme soda.” It’s probably like the cream soda you’re familiar with, only it’s a bright, shocking, emerald green.
Mostly, creme soda is used as a mixer for a drink they like to call a John Deere, usually taken as a double (especially if you want to, you know, act like a man) with two shots of 86-proof cane sugar alcohol. The resulting highball cocktail — whose name comes from the obvious colour association as well as the fact that it runs you over like a lawnmower — is delicious, refreshing, and quite deadly. Ordering a first round of John Deeres is commonly called “hopping aboard the cane train,� so stated because once you climb aboard the train, you generally ride it to the very last stop, occasionally waking up in the back seat of a strange car in an equally unfamiliar underground parking lot. True story.
And if you’re wondering how prominent a role the “cane train� played in last Saturday’s day trip to watch a Super 14 rugby league match between the Pretoria Bulls and the Wellington Hurricanes, I would advise you to bet the “under,� keeping in mind that I’m usually wrong about these things. In other words, actually bet the over.
We arranged a 10:30am pickup for our ride from Johannesburg to Pretoria, the former’s sister city located a half hour’s journey up the M1 motorway. Present and accounted for were the official Sportstrotter fiancée and two of her work friends, the Bostonian baseball fan Jeff and our resident South African sports nut, Grant, who had graciously arranged the whole deal.
The Bulls match didn’t start till 3:30pm, but this wasn’t exactly the buzzy encounter of the day, as the defending league champion Bulls sat near the bottom of the league table. The match everybody was looking forward to was the clash between the Durban Sharks, South Africa’s only strong hope left for a title, and the Brumbies (named after the feral Australian horse) — a night match at the Brumbies’ home park in Canberra that kicked off at 11:30am in Pretoria.
We settled in Pretoria’s fantastic Hatfield Square, a plaza ringed by open-front bars, each with a large shaded patio where students and locals sit on picnic tables and enjoy each bar’s outdoor big-screen television. The Sharks took control of the match early, dominating the first half and posting a solid lead that should have been even bigger. With every score, the entire square let out a loud cheer for the Sharks.
(According to another local friend, Marten, this only happened because an Aussie team is always more hated than any in-country rival. There’s still bad blood (along with other fluids) between Sharks and Bulls fans, especially after the Bulls beat the Sharks in last year’s final, 20-19, on a controversial last-minute try and conversion.)
But oh, did things turn in the second half. Everything that had gone right for the Sharks in the first half went wrong in the second, and Grant looked about ready to burst as the Brumbies put the game away and damaged the Sharks’ championship ambitions (Grant is from the south of the country, near Port Elizabeth, so his Sharks fandom is legit).
We’d already done all we could with the Windhoeks, the Peronis, the Amstels of the world, so there was only one way left to combat the malaise birthed by the Sharks’ collapse: we hopped aboard the cane train.
Soon, everything was great with the world again! Sure, Jeff was a little hesitant to hop aboard with us, having made some questionable decisions on his last ride. But we ordered him one anyways, and after a minute or two he was holding his John Deere close, petting the condensation on the outside of the glass and whispering to it, “I’m sorry, you’re right, let’s never fight again!�
With spirits renewed by two double John Deeres each, we walked to the park, Loftus Versfeld. The stadium was only half full at kickoff, and stayed that way throughout the game — another product of what Marten would call the “fair-weatherness” of South African fans. Those Pretoria fans that stayed away after the team’s dismal first half of the season missed by what all reports was the best game of the season, the Bulls scoring a try three minutes into the game and running up the score, so that by halftime they had amassed what the Sharks hadn’t: an insurmountable lead.
Despite the locals’ fun-loving, indulgent culture, you can’t buy beer inside the stadium at a Super 14 league match. Bizarre. What you can buy is biltong, South Africa’s version of jerky. A plastic sack of the stuff costs 25 rand (about $3) and will last you the entire match. I got plain beef but really fell for Grant’s peri peri–spiced biltong. But eating all of this dried meat, though, is that is makes you wicked thirsty, especially on a hot day, so we made our way to the beer garden outside the stadium at halftime to maintain our cane high.
The “beer garden� turned out to be a tiny fenced-off area under the concrete stands, full of picnic tables and crammed with people – it felt a little like a frat party held underneath a freeway bridge. The beer situation was simple: you could buy cans of Castle lager, by the six-pack. That’s it. And they would actually hand you the whole six-pack, still shrink-wrapped in plastic, with all six tabs popped. I have to say, carrying two bricks of beer back to your friends on a hot African day is one of the more triumphal feelings in all the world.
We also met a groom-to-be dressed up for his stag party, wearing an inflated plastic cow on his crotch and a blue Bulls thong panty on his head. (Actually, we saw several guys in the stadium wearing the thong on the head. Must be a thing down here).
We got back into the stadium with only 15 minutes to go in the game, the Bulls having expanded their lead and the crowd more jubilant than they’d been perhaps all season. They cheered the team’s star, Bryan Habana, the 2007 World Player of the Year who scored eight tries in last year’s World Cup for champions South African and scored the aforementioned late try to win last year’s Super 14 final against the Sharks. They sang along with the Afrikans stadium anthems, a strange cross between bluegrass country rock and overproduced Euro techno pop. It was a great sunny fall day in Pretoria.
With four minutes to play and victory assured, we retired to the post-match bar on the grounds, the Sin Bin Café. Grant decided that a couple more rounds of John Deeres were in the cards, and we all went along with the plan – like I said, when you hop aboard the cane train, it’s hard to jump off. The bar was playing this wildly triumphal Afrikaans song, so I asked what it was all about.
“It’s called De La Rey,� said Grant.
“What’s it about?�
“Basically, it’s a song about how the Afrikaners got fucked by the English in the Boer war.�
“Wow,� I said.
“The crazy part,� said Jeff, interrupting the sweet-nothings conversation he was having with his glass of sweet green elixir, “is what they call the English. ‘Soutie,’ they call them. It means ‘salt dicks.’�
“I don’t get it,� I said.
“Well, they thought the English colonials always had one foot in South Africa, and one back in the UK. So guess what was left hanging in the ocean?�
Choo, choo!
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