This is an excerpt from a nice piece from Australia’s RugbyHeaven:

“It’S clearly that time of the year when rugby officials, who should know better, try to fight the winter chill by warming themselves up through talking hot air.

Over in New Zealand, Springboks coach Peter de Villiers has played the race card after former All Blacks prop Craig Dowd described him as a “puppet”. This prompted South Africa’s first black coach to moan that Dowd’s comment smacked of racism, which he says is rife in New Zealand and Australia.

But is calling someone a puppet racist? Hardly. Then again, de Villiers may have a point. It is obvious his white assistant coach Dick Muir is the puppet, and de Villiers the ventriloquist. Every time the cameras went to the South African coach’s box during the All Blacks Tests, Muir was screaming down the two-way line to the sideline staff, and de Villiers was doing nothing.

One time de Villiers seemed to be executing the great ventriloquist’s trick of having a drink of water while Muir kept screaming down the line.

But that’s nothing compared to the dribble coming out of the International Rugby Board propaganda politburo.

The Herald last week revealed that the IRB has made an audacious dash for cash by slugging countries an exorbitant $207 million tournament fee to host the 2015 World Cup, and a whopping $248m for 2019. It has got the organisation’s mice and fat cats running alleyways.

Once again, they are trying to defend the indefensible, which is that the IRB has become little more than a cash register.

Such a reaction is nothing new for their leading “communications” official, who was recently accused of widely disseminating an email that lampooned an Australian IRB delegate. And this is the same person who in 1995 showed how off the pace he was when he told the Herald a media release coming out the next day wasn’t worth worrying about.

Not worth worrying about?”

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