Stephen Jones delivers his latest volley from South Africa and focuses on the storied history of violent games in Port Elizabeth in his Rolling Maul blog for The Times.
"The Campaign for Real Stadium Names is invalidated today as whatever they now call the Boet Erasmus Stadium here in Port Elizabeth, the Lions are not playing there anyway. We are at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, a different place altogether.
"In fact, our youthful taxi driver last night had never even heard of the Boet Erasmus, even though it is one of the great names of South African rugby history. Mind you, that wasn't his worst offence. That was to demand a preposterously high fare from Eddie Butler, whose reaction made us all glad that we were never taxi drivers in Pontypool. In no time at all the driver was desperately trying to pay us for the honour.
"Mind you, the old place didn't half house a few punch-ups in its time. No touring team of any nationality came to the Boet Erasmus without helping to touch off World War 3 and 4 in the same match. It was also at Boet Erasmus that I finally decided on the identity of the hardest man who ever played rugby. I had always narrowed the choice down to around 400 but in 1994 on an England tour, when Eastern Province and the Lions staged the Battle of Boet Erasmus, I realised that Graham Dawe of Bath and England was the runaway winner of the title."
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