All-Night Vigil

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 466, 22 September 1928, Page 7

All-Night Vigil

CAPETOWN RUGBY ‘FANS’ WAIT MANY HOURS TO BOOK SEATS FOR FINAL TEST AGAINST ALL BLACKS

SOAP-BOXES AND UKULELES

Away back in the beginning of August a crowd of 800 people “queued” up in a Capetown street, waiting for the bookings for the final test match between South Africa and the All Blacks. Five women gathered together outside the Rugby Board’s booking office before daybreak, 26 hours before there would be a chance of getting tickets. All day long they waited. Darkness fell, but there was still 13 hours to wait before the first seats were sold —and the match itself was a month away. COSMOPOLITAN SEAT SEEKERS As darkness fell the queue grew; no commonplace British queue, but a cosmopolitan crowd of Europeans, Indians, raw Zulus, cunning Cape people, and Malays—no Cape Malay misses a Rugger match. Many were the hired “space-takers,” so well known in theatreland, but most were poor men and women who were willing to give as much as a week’s play to see the All Blacks play the deciding match of the rubber. Each had some creature comfort to lessen the hardships of the wait; some had deck-chairs, soapboxes, collapsible stools, attache cases, and one man had even removed the springed seat of a motor-car to provide himself with a bed. Wherever a banjo or a ukulele was being strummed, a little knot gathered, and bridge fiends, as little disturbed as if casually playing a .rubber in their own homes, dealt and bid over improvised card tables. Peanut sellers, sandwich-men, newspaper boys all did good trade.

The real thrill of the evening was when “Bennie” Osier. South Africa’s

most famous footballer, appeared in company with another Springbok, Boy de Villiers. The two internationals sat down on the pavement, and discussed the test prospects, much to the delight of a crowd of hero-wor-shipping sell oolboys. Their disappointment wa s great when, after staying there about

an hour, he left. “Even Bennie Osier can’t get a ticket to see himself play,” cried a wag in the crowd, and the crowd cheered when Bennie turned round and smiled. Happily fo.r the picturesque but scantily-clad raggamuffins among the throng, it was a typical South African midwinter night—warm and mellow with a full moon. And as the moon went down the thrumming of the banjos died away, the candles of the bridge players were snuffed, and the tired sank into sleep, strangers nestling close to each other, and sharing here and there a blanket. And this was a month before the