Top of the World - Ya Nee

So South Africa are the Under 19 world champs, the under 21 world champs, the Tri-nations champions, holders of the Mandela Cup, Awarded Coach of the year, Player of the year and Team of the year. We have just crushed France in the second test so it wouldn’t be incorrect to say we are currently on top of the world?! Well, NO, not exactly!!

We lost against England and Ireland (!) last year, I was at both these games and we were terrible. Our teams in the Super 12 were atrocious. There are more politically motivated decisions and selections in SA Rugby than the houses of parliament! Politically motivated decisions are hard to move away from and are almost accepatble given our history, BUT the backstabbing, egotistical nature of SA rugby administrators is disgusting. These people make me sick! Why the bloody hell has the Currie Cup gone back to a 14 team competition. It is ridiculous and can only lead to a weaker national game, I’ll tell you the reason why: The presidents of the small unions who outnumber the big (read important) unions 9-5 all have the same voting power on the SARU executive board. These idiots were the ones who got together and voted Brian Van Rooyen in and in return Mr Van Rooyen promised them he would change the format of the the Currie Cup (again!) so they could be included. Thanks for wasting our time and playing silly buggers in your own interests with our great game. Again the Sharks, Lions and Bulls are on one side and the Cheetahs and WP on the other. Why? Who decided the composition of the two leagues anyway? Who really cares, the Currie Cup has become a joke. Do you begrudge Kevin Pieterson or Clyde Rathbone, what about Stuart Abbot, Matt Stevens, Dan Vickerman etc all South African playing for , England, Australia etc. These guys are all professionals as are the SA rugby (cricket as well) players but the SA players work for businesses with an efficiency the equivalent of Telkom whereas England and Aus are businesses equivalent to Microsoft! Who would you rather work for?

Just read an article which really stuck the knife in, our coach Jake White, the International Coach of the Year(!) is now threatening to resign because he is being critisised by the same administrators (those who have their own agenda) for not playing more black players! These are the same administrators who allowed Andre Markgraaf to become Vice - President. What the F$%&! We need solidarity and continuity in SA Rugby, the only way to make the stupid $%*&s realise this is to boycott a major test match. Good on you Sasol and Canterbury who have both come out in support of White in saying they would pull out of SA Rugby if Jake White was pushed out.

Even bloody worse, SA soccer lost to Ghana!! That means my world cup final tickets are down the tubes! Bunch of useless clowns.

The Lions lost , also convincingly. But they were unlucky to lose their captain in the first minute. BOD, Hill and Dallaglio are major loses to the Lions and I honestly believe they are seriously weakened by it. They still have a chance if they can attack better in the second test. Their defence was good enough but they didn’t get any ball, and when they did hey didn’t use it wisely. The one negative for me was the South african citing commisioner. The tosser decided that the tackle on BOD (Brian O’Driscoll) did not warrant any further investigation, closed the matter and then jumped on a plane back to SA. Did he even watch the footage of the tackle? An off-the-ball tackle which ends the captain of the Lions once-in-a-lifetime tour in the first minute surely warrants further investigation, especially given the video evidence. Its sad to see SA adminstrators always making an arse of themselves.

Finally congrats to the Under 21’s who managed to win the world cup. It will be interesting to track the progression of thes players through to the pro ranks especially considering the number of black players. We’ll see how well the SA rugby system treats them, bet ya not as well as if they came to the UK or Australia.

To end on a good note, it was a great victory by the Boks against France. The French are a really strong team and we convincingly neutralised them. There are a few areas we must improve on before we meet Australia but the signs so far are good.