SACSRUGBY

Look at the official records and they will tell you that the first match at Newlands was between Stellenbosch and Villagers on 31 May 1890. It was not the first match.

The first match was played between SACS 2^nd XV and Bishops 2^nd XV. The second match was between their first fifteens. They were being used to see if the ground could work. It worked all right.

Before Newlands, big rugby was played on one of the commons, Rondebosch or swampy Green Point, mainly Rondebosch, where the ground with its molehills, sand and koffeekilp ran from east to west, from a clump of trees where there were Anglican, Methodist and Moslem cemeteries towards the railway line – from the cemetery to the station end. It was roped off and beer was on sale for a tickey!

Cricket had gone off to Newlands and struck a deal with the Vicomtesse de Montmort for the lease and eventually the purchase of a piece of ground, part vlei and part pine forest.

Humbly rugby came to grand cricket and asked if it could use its ground during the winter. Grandly cricket showed humble rugby the door. And so it came to pass that rugby went off, cap in hand, to Lydia Corinna d’Oligny Victomtesse de Montmort and asked for land.

Why the lady, a victomtesse?

Jacob Letterstedt arrived in Cape Town and married Maria dreyer, a widow who died in 1848, after the Swede married Lydia Meredith Boys who was 31 years younger than he was. Back they came to Cape Town where Jacob had a brewery – where there is still a cheerful brewery.

On 13 May 1853 Jacob and Lydia had a daughter in Cape Town, though she spent most of her life in Paris where she married Vicomte jean Antoine Etienne Loppin de Montmort.

Jacob died in 1862 and the brewery passed to his daughter, who lacked her father’s enthusiasm for beer. In 1888 she leased the land to another Swede, Anders Ohlsson who eventually brought the property in 1896.

But in 1888 it still belonged to the Victomtesse and that was the year that western Province went to ask for land.

The man behind the move was Thomas Barry Herold, the second secretary of the WPRFU, who later moved to Pretoria and disappeared from rugby.

The Victomtesse, grand lady, leased some 150 square yards of pine forest, with generous water rights (3000 gallons per week), for the Liesbeeck passed close by, to the WPRFU for 25 years at £50 for the first year and £100 per annum after that. The agreement was signed on 1 December 1888.

The Union was allowed to have a bar at the ground on condition that its beer was solely from Letterstedt’s Brewery, which was probably not a hardship.

The first donation towards the ground was made by a SACS man – JH “Onze Jan” Hofmeyr.

The Union struggled for money. It held a Fancy Fair, in which the clubs took part. The Cape Town Cricket Club used it in summer – for a fee. The Woodstock Dramatic Society raised £25 with a performance of the Pirates of Penzance. The Union issued 25 debentures of £10 each.

The trees were cleared – at a price of £470. The Union bought an old galvanised-iron shed from the cricket club for £40. It acted as a tool shed, changeroom and bar.

The ground was laid out from east to west, by analogy with the ground that had been used on the Rondebosch Common. It remained like this till 1927 when it was changed to run from north to south and a new grand stand was build – at a cost of £15 000.

From then on, till Jan Pickard became president in 1981, the WPRFU struggled with the upkeep of Newlands. Pickard’s presidency signalled the end of the austerity days at Newlands and a whole new stadium came into being.

Newlands is different. It is an old ground, in rugby terms. The only older grounds where test rugby is still played are Lansdowne Road in Dublin and the National Stadium in Cardiff. It is the only test ground in South Africa bought and paid for entirely by rugby.

The Union acquired ownership of the ground in 1894 – for £2 500. And in that year the first Currie Cup tournament was held, at Newlands.

In the mid-fifties the Union build a new Grand Stand. It struggled for money that it borrowed £50 000 from Transvaal and then could manage only half the stand.

On one occasion the president, Piet Bayly, another SACS man, came into the dressing room and told Jan Pickard, the captain, that Province had to win to get into the final to earn enough money to pay the bank the interest it owed.

Jan Pickard changed all that. Suites did it for him. Every time he built, suites were also built and their rental for a stipulated period equalled the cost of the building, and the suite owners had to pay in advance!