Good grief. What on earth was everyone thinking? These were amateur sportsmen, on whom fans preyed as the source of their weekend adrenalin buzz, and an excuse to charge their glasses in the appropriate manner.
Hobbs had seriously considered giving up his top career in its infancy because of the difficulty mixing day job, playing rugby, duty to family - not a problem for the modern-day All Black who gets paid more than the entire Cavaliers team might have earned, had even the wildest rumours at the time been fact.
Reflection this week that he later regretted making the tour, thus, has to be put in context.
It was a consequence of the hour-11 realisation they'd been conned - the Cavaliers were never going to win those four tests, of which Jock Hobbs was captain in three.
He was the most unlikely of people to whinge, but he did, and commented: "I don't think I've ever criticised a referee publicly, and hope I would do so under only the most extreme circumstances ... For the sake of our own credibility we needed to secure victory to prove we weren't there simply on holiday."
Nothing compared to the South African psyche at the time, a matter of national importance that their team, politically banned from playing around the world, would beat the best team that was allowed to play. The generation which remembers 1995 and Suzie the tea lady might get the drift.
What is now important with regard to Jock Hobbs' subtle legacy is that we may put in context the events of 1986.
South Africans openly agreed with Cavaliers' players concerns, and were embarrassed - if that's what they had to do to win.
While it was the turning point in rugby, there must be recognition of what the tour achieved in also hastening a South African rethink of the apartheid rule of segregation and denial based on race.
At home, fewer than 14 months later, the All Blacks won the first Rugby World Cup. Suddenly, all was forgotten, and our rugby heroes were real men again.
