This year’s tournament, which signals a bold new era for club rugby on the back of significant post-pandemic and RWC 2023-inspired growth in the community game, is also supported by Northam Platinum, whose commitment to community aligns with the grassroots spirit of the Pick n Pay Gold Cup.
Pick n Pay’s title partnership with the national knockout championship for non-university clubs, meanwhile, is part of a four-year agreement that includes becoming Tier-1 sponsors of the four-time Rugby World Cup and back-to-back Castle Lager Rugby Championship-winning Springboks.
The ‘FA Cup’ Final of South African rugby will take place at the iconic Brookside Sports Ground in Claremont, in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, with the match televised live on SuperSport channel 207 (kick-off 15h00).
The final – remarkably the first match between these two giants of South African club rugby – is being billed as the club version of the country’s age-old North vs South provincial and franchise rivalry, and for good reason. Villager and Naka Bulls go into the Final with two of the most historic trophies in club rugby – Western Province’s Grand Challenge Cup and the Blue Bulls’ Carlton Cup – already safely locked away in their respective trophy cabinets.
But it’s the iconic and mysterious nine-carat Gold Cup, with a history both unknown and perfectly apt, that every club player wants to hold aloft – and history will be made in spades regardless of which team drinks from the 96-year-old trophy come Saturday evening.
Why mysterious? The Cup was manufactured in 1929 in Sheffield, England by Mappin & Webb, who are no ordinary jewellers. The company, which celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, have been silversmiths to the United Kingdom’s kings and queens since 1897, and to this day continue to service His Royal Highness King Charles III.
Mappin & Webb is also the custodian of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London and the company’s painstaking restoration of the Gold Cup in 2017 means that, almost a century after originally crafting the Gold Cup, a royal thread remains part of the fabric of community rugby at the tip of Africa.
Villager have been unstoppable in Cape Town.
A fire destroyed all of Mappin & Webb’s records from the early 20th century, which means that, to this day, no one knows who originally commissioned the Gold Cup, for what purpose, or, indeed, how it came to South Africa, where it first appeared in the window of a Cape Town jeweler in 1960.
It is here where it was spotted by a group of rugby administrators, in search of a trophy for their new competition. They paid the sum of 1,000 pounds – an enormous amount in those days – after raising the money through donations from their members. Fittingly, therefore, the Pick n Pay Gold Cup is a trophy for club players, paid for by club players.
As for the Final itself, the match looms heavy with the weight of history – but also of excitement and expectation as the club game enters a new golden era.
For Naka Bulls, established in Pretoria in 1998 when Adelaars and Oostelikes merged, victory on the road against the second-oldest non-university club in the country would represent the scaling of club rugby’s Everest, and the culmination of the long-held dreams of club chairman Ian Herbst, who has seen it all in his 11 years in charge, and director of rugby, Marinus van der Watt, who has been at the helm since 2015.
Naka are gunning for an unprecedented hat-trick of Gold Cup trophies, and the men from the country’s capital would become only the second team after Rustenburg Impala – who won the title in 2014, 2016 and 2019 – to lift the golden trophy on three separate occasions since it was introduced in 2013.
Villager, the second oldest non-university club in the country after arch-rivals Hamilton, last month lifted the Western Province Grand Challenge trophy – and the Super League A title – for the first time in 25 years.
The men in white, coached by Andy Coetzee, now also find themselves one match away from their first national crown in almost half a century, when legendary Springbok captain and 1995 Rugby World Cup-winning manager Morné du Plessis lifted the old national club championship trophy in 1980, alongside the likes of current Villager president Piet Geldenhuys and Western Province legend Bossie Clarke.
Naka Bulls will be defending their title against Villager.
Interestingly, assistant coach Anton Moolman, who represented both Villager and Hamilton in his playing days, will achieve an unprecedented ‘double’ on Saturday should his team taste victory: he would become the first coach to help lead both clubs to Western Province and national titles.
Villager and Naka Bulls are the last two clubs left standing after 30 do-or-die matches over the past month, which have provided unprecedented drama at community venues across the length and breadth of the country – from Setaria in Limpopo to Robertson in the Western Cape, Kariega in the Eastern Cape to Kathu in the Northern Cape.
Villager earned their golden ticket with a tense 30-21 home win last weekend against nine-time defending KwaZulu-Natal champions College Rovers. Naka Bulls produced a dominant display away from home when they beat their biggest rivals, Northam Rhinos, 28-22 at Bushveld Park in Setaria.
“The Pick n Pay Gold Cup semi-finals delivered more of what we have come to expect over the past few weeks – high quality rugby and high drama,” said SA Rugby CEO, Rian Oberholzer.
“All roads now lead to Brookside on Saturday for the ultimate North v South match between the two best sides in the competition.
“Even with the heavyweight title fight remaining, the resurgence of the Gold Cup brand after its four-year, pandemic-induced hiatus has been phenomenal to witness. The Gold Cup Rugby Facebook page alone has had almost one-and-a-half million page views in the past month alone and the vibe and ‘gees’ around the competition is palpable wherever matches have been played.
“It is always important to have commercial partners who buy into what we are trying to achieve, and I can say unequivocally that in Pick n Pay and Northam Platinum, the Gold Cup now has the partners to help it realise its full potential in the years to come. This is truly a golden era for community rugby.”
Match information: Pick n Pay Gold Cup Final
Villager FC vs Naka Bulls
Date: Saturday 25 October
Time: 15h00
Venue: Brookside, Claremont, Cape Town
Referee: Stephan Geldenhuys
ARs: Juan de Bod, Zoë Naudé
TV: SuperSport channel 207
The teams:
Villager: 15 Jandré Grobler, 14 Wandile Ntshangase, 13 Noegh Hayward, 12 Andries Viljoen (captain), 11 Graham Thompson, 10 Bradley Thain, 9 William Rose, 8 Thomas Meyer, 7 Niel Venter, 6 Dylan Utete, 5 Ewan Coetzee, 4 William Scott, 3 Raeez Salie, 2 MC de Jongh, 1 Adam Neethling. Replacements: 16 Johannes Geldenhuys, 17 Kgosi Mashagane, 18 Nathan Meilhon, 19 Adriaan Rabie, 20 Reimerd Spreeth, 21 Nkosi Nofuma, 22 Giuliano de Franchi, 23 Nathan Hendricks.
Naka Bulls: 15 Adam Makhari, 14 Onyekachi John-Osunkwo, 13 Marin Austen, 12 Xavier Human, 11 JJ Motlhodi, 10 Hansie Graaff, 9 Jack Hart, 8 Marco van Baalen, 7 Lohan Potgieter, 6 Eckard Boshoff, 5 Juan van der Westhuizen, 4 Stephan Vermeulen, 3 Christo Bezuidenhout, 2 Christoff Craill, 1 Bielie Grundelingh (captain). Replacements: 16 Thansville Mayman, 17 Franco Botha, 18 Boela Venter, 19 Edward White, 20 Ethan Williams, 21 Maxwell Osborne, 22 Jason Makhari, 23 Ruan Grobbelaar.
Road to the Final:
Villager:
27 September – Round of 32: beat Swallows 99-10 (Cape Town)
4 October – Last 16: beat Hamilton 27-14 (Cape Town)
11 October – Quarter-final: beat Gardens 40-35 (Cape Town)
18 October – Semi-final: beat College Rovers 30-21 (Cape Town)
Naka Bulls:
27 September – Round of 32: beat Safcol United 66-8 (Pretoria)
4 October – Last 16: beat Louis Trichardt 88-19 (Pretoria)
11 October – Quarter-final: beat Northam Wolves 57-22 (Pretoria)
18 October – Semi-final: beat Northam Rhinos 28-22 (Setaria, Limpopo)
