Scotty Stevenson: Dignity, grace, humility - words sum up Black Caps' legacy

Ross Taylor with fans at the Cloud on Queens Wharf. Photo / Dean Purcell

Dignity, grace and humility have been much in the news these past few days, and with New Zealand's great cricketing carnival now over (and Australia's great cricketing hangover just beginning) it is those three nouns that will be remembered as the greatest gift the Black Caps gave this nation's sports fans.

It's a lovely gift. For those nouns are timeless ones, those qualities elusive. They are things that are learned over time, passed down by the wise to the impetuous. They are the rewards for curiosity and compassion. They are the qualities we wish our children to possess, and the things we search for in ourselves in times of stress and in times of celebration. Those qualities outlast the victories and, like a prescription for perspective, diminish the defeats.

Not every athlete possesses these qualities because competitive sport is by nature ruthless. Anyone who has spent time around top-level athletes understands the intensely personal sacrifice made in order to fuel the desire to achieve. Competitive sport is often a selfish pursuit, one in which things such as dignity, grace and humility are subordinate to those other three commonly quoted nouns: blood, sweat and tears.

During the recent national outbreak of "niceness" I was asked this question: "When results matter, is it better to be gracious in defeat, or an arsehole in victory?" It is a good question. The history of sport is a catalogue of extraordinary deeds, quite often performed by, well, arseholes. Some of those arseholes even have New Zealand citizenship.

The history of sport, however, also shows us that extraordinary deeds are often much better remembered when they are performed by the dignified, the gracious, and the humble, and in rugby those qualities are best and invariably embodied by that great chunk of a man from the Cape of South Africa, Schalk Burger.

James Lentjes of the Highlanders congratulates Schalk Burger of the Stormers on his 100th Suprer Rugby match. Photo / Getty Images

On Friday night Burger will play his 101st game for the Stormers, when his team attempts to do what none has so far this season and defeat the Hurricanes.

Last week, against the Highlanders, he played his 100th.

Before the match we spoke about the milestone and not unexpectedly the blond colossus deflected any implied praise, choosing instead to speak about his team. He then ran out under the roof with trademark smile and once again gave every ounce of himself in a losing effort.

After the match, as the Highlanders gathered for a quiet beer, Schalk Burger, smiling still, was the first of the Stormers to join them. He found an inconspicuous spot in the bar and, as he has done for more than a decade, he shared a beer with the men he had just tackled, squashed and mauled.

Then something happened: from across the bar, a young man named James Lentjes noticed the glass in Burger's hand was empty. Lentjes, it must be noted, had worn the same number that evening, the number seven. It was a milestone night for the transplanted Cantabrian too, being his Super Rugby debut. Lentjes, 23, excused himself from a conversation with his parents, ordered a couple at the bar, walked over to the veteran and handed him a beer.

A casual observer might say of the next 40 minutes that two guys shared a pint and talked - nothing to see here, please disperse. But for the keener viewer, those 40 precious minutes represented a passing of the baton, a generous sharing of wisdom, an opportunity too good to miss. Those 40 minutes were filled with the observations and ruminations of a man so full of life that death was told to take a number, and get in line.

In the end, there was a selfie, because that's just what people do these days. Pixel-perfect evidence of the time James met dignity, grace, humility and Schalk. I hope he prints it out (do people actually do that any more?) and puts it in a book somewhere. And I hope that over the next few years, as his career develops, he looks at it regularly and remembers a night when, for the price of a couple of ales, he got the lesson of a lifetime.

Just as we all, over the past six weeks, got that lesson - a lesson that was never lost on Grantland Rice:

"For when that one great scorer comes to mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the game."