Avril Malan’s Springboks, nicknamed the ‘unsmiling giants’, were the last South Africa team to arrive in Britain for a tour by sea. Given the conditions that both teams turned out to play in, the sea would have provided perfect preparations for the South Africans as a gale force wind and lashings of torrential rain conspired to waterlog the pitch in Cardiff, making a fast-flowing game virtually impossible and handling errors frequent.
Keith Oxlee’s penalty remained the only score of the game when the final whistle blew and Wales had missed what had been their best opportunity to win in the five fixtures played thus far. Bryn Meredith and Terry Davies put pressure on their opponents and ensured that South Africa were in a match, especially when the weather ensured very little rugby was played.Â
South Africa won the toss and opted to play towards the East Terrace with the gale at their backs in the first half. Following an infringement in the scrum on Wales’s own line a penalty was awarded and Oxlee stepped up to score the penalty, managing somehow to extract the ball with his boot out of the sludgy mud from where he took the kick.
Match reports at the time suggested that at this point Malan was asked by the referee if he wished to abandon the match and that he refused with South Africa ahead. Malan claimed many years later in an interview for the WRU’s ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ DVD that this was not the case and that it was possible that his opposite number, Terry Davies, was asked the same question. It mattered not, the match continued.
Wales attempted to put pressure on South Africa near their own line by kicking to touch near the try line to make the Springboks line-out defensively. However, the savvy South Africans deliberately caught the ball and went into touch, a tactic employed to make Wales take the line-out and switch the pressure from the Springboks in defence to their attackers. Ordinarily it may have been sporting suicide, a good take and drive to the line could easily have secured a try fro Wales, but with the weather conditions as poor as they were, the leather rugby ball was greasy and slippery and it was all the home side could do to attempt to catch it. With pressure on Wales from the throw in to successfully catch against the challenge of the Springboks, the ball was knocked forward and South Africa continually relieved the pressure with a defensive scrum.
At the beginning of the second half Danny Harris thought he had scored for Wales as he pummeled his way through a bevy of rucked bodies on the South African line, but with a last gasp South African take and touch down, a twenty-two metre drop out was awarded.
As a post script to a match that had almost seemed impossible given the conditions the River Taff burst its banks later in the evening of the 3rd December and on Sunday 4th December 1960 half of the Arms Park pitch was underwater.
