The title above is a direct quote from a good friend of mine whom I’d taunted during our first two years at UCT for being a mere B.Com student, as that is what he said to me the day I deregistered from my putrid attempt at a B.Bus.Sci. and took the step down to the good ol’ Bachelor of Commerce. I use it because I think it’s right to welcome you all to this new arm of the SARugby.com universe. And because Welkom pertains to one of the things I’d like to have a chat about in this, my first ever blog. And because self-deprecation is the easiest form of humour.

So, Welkom. Pretty random place with which to start your first blog, but amongst all the broo ha ha of Currie Cup Finals and vomiting on jerseys and shooting Springboks and writing exams I’ve been trying to find a happy place in amongst the honest slugfest that is the relegation-promotion battle. And a pox on Supersport for denying me this right. Why on earth, in an era where teams are are literally dying for coverage, can our leading sports broadcasters not give us this fight-to-the-death, this mortal combat, this war of obscure names? I’ve never been to Welkom, or Potchefstroom, or Brakvegas. Hell, I’m not even sure where those places are. But I know rugby and I know that last weekend there were 60 men who probably get paid in onions and tickets to the boereorkes playing their hearts out so that they can have the honour of playing against the superstars of our beloved code. I want to see that. I want to see these guys go tooth-and-nail for the financial security and shot at glory that a year in top flight Currie Cup gives them. If we so desperately want rugby to become a countrywide sport with more than just 5 teams competing for the top spots then these games need to be televised. Little Stompie van Deventer needs to see his longtime hero True Blue Smit play his last game in the scarlet of the Valke before upping and leaving for the lucrative shores of the Leopards. Jacko Jackson, a fine product of the my school arch rivals from the Midlands needs to know that his move up North from the rolling fields of Shaka’s Kingdom to cut his teeth and forge a future in rugby will be recognised and that he’ll get the coverage he so desperately craves. The same goes for guys like Ashley Johnson, and Cecil Afrika.

Supersport’s made a big push to cover schoolboy and club rugby and I salute them. But it’s no good doing that and then ignoring the poor buggers once they’ve pursued their rugby careers that have been so tantalisingly marketed to them and are playing for one of the lower-level sides, only to find their biggest matches of the year scheduled for Friday afternoon at 16h30 with no telecast. It’s time Supersport got on this and put more 1st Division rugby on TV. It’ll create more of an interest in these lower-tier sides which will hopefully help them grow in strength and competitiveness. And hell, at the very least we’ll get to see more of the likes of Draathart de Lange, and True Blue Smit, and Doepie du Preez.

As for the big final, I am literally shaking with excitement. As a Sharks fan, I approach finals like the bouncers at UCT’s favourite nightspot approached their third attempt at Std 7, with extreme apprehension. But I’ve got a good feeling about this one. John Plumtree has proved himself to be a great coach, and his Drizabone sense of humour and no-nonsense approach to running a rugby team has seen the Sharks grow in stature since his inception at the helm. Their support lines have improved by infinity, and the offloads in the tackle have increased correspondingly. This makes the Sharks deadly on counter-attack, as we’ve seen all season. They’re also tied up in key positions. Michalak and Pienaar go together like Sonny and Cher, like boerie and All Gold, like Amy Winehouse and crack. Turbos is having the time of his life in the 15 jersey. Frank Steyn is at inside center, just the way a-ha a-ha I like it. The Holy Trinity of Deysel, Botes and Wonderboy Kankowski are, in my unbiased opinion, the form loose trio combination in the tournament. And the all-star front row speaks for itself.

But not so fast Kowalski. The Bulls have also grown into their new coach. After 8 rounds of Super 14 people wanted more of the one-eyed bergie lying outside Tops than they wanted of Frans Ludeke, but the big man with the small vocabulary has pulled the team together and they’re all of a sudden playing some very attractive open-style rugby. That D-Rock Hougaard has moved his boot and three-times table up North to be replaced by the more fluid Morne Steyn probably has a lot to do with that, but I like Ludeke’s way of utilising the Bulls’ strong pack to get their talented runners into the game. For reasons unknown Wynand Olivier is playing incredible rugby from second-five. Habana’s doing his usual thing again and shaking off his early-season blues and playing some scarily good rugby. They’ve got the Rugby Genius at 9 and the progeny of Zeus and Mother Rugby playing at 8.

So what’s my call? Well, quite obviously I’m shouting Sharks but that most certainly doesn’t mean I don’t think that those Jacaranda-scented Baby Blues aren’t going to be bringing the noise. It will certainly be a case of wearing the more solid black Sharkies jocks over the more risque white ones. But I think that a combination of home ground advantage, a barrage of gamebreakers, The Beast from the North-East and the promise of clear bottles with Blue Tops on and blonde girls without any tops on at Joe’s will certainly spur my Banana Boys on.

I’ve got 2kg’s of boerie, 2kg’s of rump and 2kg’s of lamb chops on order. I’ve got my mates pulling in for a study break and rugby fest. I’ve got my Reebok-era Sharks jersey hanging above my desk. I’ve been wearing my black undies for a week now. You know it’s Currie Cup final time. Ho ho hooooooo yessa.

C’mon Nata   -  aaaaaaaaal.

Peace.

Graham Henry has stated that he can see the day in the not too distant future where kiwi’s choosing to play for Sth African and Australian S14 sides will be considered for AB’s selection.

This would have raised more than a couple of eyebrows at NZRFU hq to see “their AB’s coach” muttering those blasphemic words to a reporter and as one can picture NZRFU CEO Steve Tew closing the door to his office and unsheathing that Samurai sword given to him as a token of “good will” from the Japanese World Cup delegation.

I ponder…is it really all that bad?

To be fair Henry stated that the S14 model would adopt the true franchise ( I guess in the USA sporting sense ) model with ownership extending beyond our respective national unions to include private interests.

Interesting too that he was quick to mention a franchise (or two) residing in Japan. Good move commercially as the time differences are workable for TV viewing and advertising so too basing a franchise in the Sth Pacific as an amalgam of Samoa, Fiji and Tonga for similar reasons - maybe not from a commercial perspective but to demonstrate to the IRB that the new SANZAR (or whatever they end up calling themselves) are developing the game in the process.

Somehow I just cannot see Argentina’s time zones being a workable option for their inclusion but hey they could kick the Poms outta the Faulklands again and base a team there…..well just encourage ‘em to “kick the Poms” maybe?

Although “the devil will be in the detail” our unions need to retain a stake in each franchise to ensure our international calendar maintains a degree of integrity with players being available but with private ownership and no salary cap the mind boggles with some of the player combinations available not to mention franchise fan bases extending beyond borders.

I can see now around the caketin in Wellington large as life billboards of the Hurricanes “front-row from hell” Tialata, Mealamu and Beast…WOW! Or imagine Giteau steering that Bulls pack around week in week out -or the Dan and Jean show at Newlands …. Priceless.

Gentlemen start your engines!

Two of SARugby.com’s most entertaining and insightful community members have agreed to join us a community bloggers.

Burton and Kiwijoe are the first two ‘celebrity posters’ (if you like) to stick their necks out and give us their unique insights.

Kiwijoe (as his name suggests) is from NZ and has built up quite a fan base on SARugby.com. His ability to see through the nonsense, the rivalries and the politics to comment contructively on rugby issues is something that we all appreciate.   

Kia ora bro - we look forward to your take from The Land of the Long White Cloud!

Our other major scoop was to secure a more formal role for SARugby.com’s most entertaining commenter - Burton.  It’s hard to describe just what he brings to the party, but it’s always a good laugh! 

Finally - if you’d like to take the step up from part time commenter to doyne of the SARugby.com blogs then please contact us here.  Our editorial staff will take a look at your work and decide whether you’ve got what it takes.

Good times!

Hey guys,

I’d just like to take a few minutes to tell you about the latest craze gripping the SARugby.com HQ.

It’s called www.blackoutrugby.com and it’s easily the best, most comprehensive and TOTALLY addictive online rugby games on the market.

Basically how it works is you sign up to the site - totally free - and register to receive your very own rugby club.

You get a squad of 30 players, a junior squad and a stadium to get you going.

From there you buy and sell players, train up your squad, put players in suitable positions.  You build training facilities, hire better coaches, hire financial advisors to help balance the books and try to keep your supporters and sponsors happy!

There are over 4000  rugby mad gamers from around South Africa and elsewhere in the world playing the game - it was started by two Kiwis - and it continues to grow and develop at an astonishing rate.

Season 3, which is coming to an end shortly, saw the introduction of National teams and u20s.  Players from your club can be called up to represent the BR Springboks.

We’re looking to get a vibe going through SARugby.com and have been working on some pretty exciting ideas for the near future.

For now, though, all there is to do is for you to register and get tinkering on your teams.

Once you’ve registered (or if you’ve already got a team) please drop us a line here and let us know your team name.  We’ll take care of the rest.

Disclaimer:  Please don’t say I didn’t warn you that it’s addictive.

A march to save the Springbok emblem, a potential senior player boycott over any possible inclusion of Luke Watson in the Bok team - later denied (predictably), Butana Khompela’s nonsensical utterances at the Sports portfolio indaba-whotsit, calls for eight black players in every representative starting XV, a covered up sex tape scandal - these are crazy times in South African rugby.

There’s never a dull moment in South African sport - and rugby in particular.  Unfortunately the flash points are usually rather embarrassing and we are forced to watch the latest developments with a morbid fascination rather than the air of excited optimism which should accompany the hype around our World Champs.

Fortunately there are some silver linings to the, seemingly ever-present, long black cloud that surrounds our rugby politics (or should that read rugby AND politics?).

The Currie Cup has regained much of it’s appeal and sparkle with the Springboks back in action.  Their return might have come too late for Western Province, but the timing was perfectly timed to set up a grande finale to the season.

Speaking of finals it really doesn’t get any better than a rematch of the 2007 Super 14 final.  We all remember that joke going around a year ago sending congratulations to the Lions and Cheetahs for making the Currie Cup final (and to the Sharks and the Bulls for making the World Cup final).  Well it proved prophetic with the two giants of the local game making it through to this year’s final.

That’s not to belittle the efforts of the Lions or the Cheetahs who undeniably showed their class with valiant team efforts.

Western Province didn’t even make it into that joke last year - although they provide their own brand of humour with their performances throughout this season.  Last year the Boks won the World Cup with only one Stormer in the squad (Schalk Burger - after JdV flew home).  This year - with up to ten Stormers in the squad - the Boks came stone last in the Tri-Nations.  I’ll leave you to draw your own analogies.

Jokes aside, I’m being quizzed and questioned about who I think will win this weekend, but to tell you the truth I’m not sure.  The Sharks have been consistently better throughout the season and have gamebreakers in their side that the Bulls, Habana being the exception, just can’t match.

That said, the way that the Bulls and the Cheetahs tore into each other in their semi-final - and how the Bulls came out on top - gave me the sneaky feeling that they might be able to stifle the Sharks and intimidate them physically.  It’s a classic match-up between two quality sides.  The different styles, the Sharks’ home ground advantage and the recent history between the two sides setting it up to be the game of the year.

It promises to be a great day, a great game AND there’s also the added bonus of a Springbok squad selection following the final.  It’s a pity it’s only Tuesday!

It’s that time of the year again when us rugby journos get to play Bok selector ahead of the three Test tour to the UK.  The Bok squad will be announced after the Currie Cup final next Saturday and - as always - there will be some surprises and players unlucky to miss out.

A rather disappointing Tri-Nations campaign has been somewhat forgotten following a pulsating and gripping Currie Cup.  Having the Springboks back in the domestic competition is worth its weight in (Green and) Gold.  The sooner the powers that be realise this, find an 10 week period where the top five teams can play each other home and away (with all their Springboks), the better.  But that’s a topic for a whole new post.

Here’s the squad that I would like to see selected: 

For simplicity’s sake I’ve picked a 30-man squad with two players in each position.  The touring team will, no doubt, include a number of utility backs and loose-forwards - but this way makes it simpler to evaluate each player’s merits.

1.  Beast Mtarariwa & Gurthro Steenkamp

The Beast was one of the finds of the Tri-Nations and picks himself.  Steenkamp looked a little out of sorts for the Springboks, but looks to have found his form for the Bulls.

Unlucky:  Heinke van der Merwe

2.  John Smit & Bismarck du Plessis

These two pick themselves.  Adriaan Strauss will probably also accompany the squad as cover.

Unlucky:  Willie Wepener

3.  Jannie du Plessis & Brian Mujati

These two will battle it out to replace CJ van der Linde at tighthead.  Mujati’s scrummaging has looked a little fragile this season which possibly gives Du Plessis the inside track.

4.  Bakkies Botha (Johann Muller) and Danie Rossouw

Bakkies is expected to be fit in time to tour.  Danie Rossouw gives versatile cover with Johann Muller on standby should Botha break down.

Unlucky:  Johann Muller

5.  Andries Bekker & Victor Matfield

Matfield hasn’t been at his best this season and the time could be here for Bekker to usurp him as the number one lineout option.

6.  Schalk Burger & Heinrich Brussouw

Burger picks himself while Brussouw deserves reward for a sensational season.

Unlucky:  Cobus Grobbelaar

7.  Juan Smith & Jean Deysel

Smith’s class is bound to shine through at some stage following a rather disappointing season.  Deysel looks the business.

Unlucky:  Keegan Daniel

8.  Ryan Kankowski & Pierre Spies

Kankowski’s form should see him start ahead of Spies at number eight.  Two explosive players with different strengths and weaknesses - they are an asset to any side.

Unlucky:  Duanne Vermuelen

9.  Fourie du Preez & Ricky Januarie

Again, these are two self-explanatory picks.  Ruan Pienaar has stated his preference for playing number nine and this could see him lose out if Butch James is selected.

Unlucky:  Ruan Pienaar

10.  Peter Grant & Butch James (Ruan Pienaar)

The most eagerly awaited selection is that of flyhalf.  Butch James still stands head and shoulders above the alternatives and should be selected for this tour if he’s going to be around for the visiting Lions in ‘09.  

Unlucky:  Morne Steyn

11.  Bryan Habana & Jongi Nokwe

Nokwe’s four-try heroics against Australia make him an automatic selection.

12.  Jean de Villiers & Frans Steyn

No doubt we’ll see Steyn continue to shuffle around the backline.  I’d most like to see him stick to 12 with De Villiers remaining the first choice.

Unlucky:  Wynand Olivier

13.  Adi Jacobs & Jaque Fourie

Jacobs was outstanding for the Springboks this year and will make it hard for Jaque Fourie to get back into the starting XV.  Fortunately they are very different types of players which gives PdV good options.

14.  JP Pietersen & Trompie Nontshinga

Every Springbok squad has to have a compulsory bolter.  I’m going for Trompie Nontshinga ahead of the Ndungane twins.

Unlucky:  Odwa & Akona

15.  Conrad Jantjes & Zane Kirchner

Zane Kirchner might be a little rough around the edges, but he has shown glimpses that he might be ready to make the step up.   He’d be unlikely to start - with Steyn, Pietersen & Fourie all capable at 15 - but the experience would be good for him.

So there you have it - that’s the squad I would take overseas.  No doubt you’ll want to tell me I need my head read, but make sure to include your squad if you do.

I’m not too sure what I’m going to do this weekend without any real rugby to watch - wish me luck.  Enjoy the weekend off.  See you on Monday!

Gareth Rosslee

UK rugby writer Stephen Jones has this to say about Luke Watson in his weekly newsletter:

Luke Watson is a very ordinary flanker. I have seen him play three times in the flesh and around five times on television and also taken the opinions of judges who I trust.

Say he joined Wasps (not that they would sign him if he paid them), he’d be miles below James Haskell, Joe Worsley, Dan Leo, John Hart, Tom Rees and Hugo Ellis in the pecking order. He is mediocre.

He is also a Springbok. Because he is the son of Cheeky Watson, a white man I once admired and who played for non-white South African teams during the apartheid era (becoming a hero of the non-white population), Watson is clearly seen as an honorary non-white and many activists are desperate that he makes the Bok team.

He has dabbled in the green jersey. He has been added to decent squads purely for political expediency. He was once foisted on Jake White, the former coach, who had to play him in some god-forsaken game and White clearly felt that Watson’s cap demeaned the jersey as a result. Was he a pawn? No. “Luke knew exactly what was going on,” White told me.

White also told of very odd and rather threatening calls he fielded saying that he could remain Bok coach for longer if only he chose Watson … as captain.

Cheeky Watson’s presence is now, according to many of all races, negative and manipulative. Last week, Luke Watson said that South African rugby is “run by Dutchmen” and that he wanted to “vomit on the Springbok jersey.”

Let’s leave aside whether his comments were racist. Let’s even leave aside the ghastly, almost childish disrespect of it all and the crudeness. Let’s leave aside the comments of Victor Matfield, who said recently that Watson played hardly any part in supporting the new coach, Peter de Villiers, last season.

The truth is that Watson is no longer fit to wear the South African jersey. And more than that - he never was.

The following is an extract from Playing the Enemy by UK journalist John Carlin. The book will be released in South Africa at the end of the week.

“Sixty minutes between two o’clock, when Nelson Mandela arrived at Ellis Park, and three o’clock, when the game began, everything happened. First there was a song, then a jumbo jet, and finally a shout that shook the world.

… Louis Luyt’s rugby union had chosen Shosholoza as the official World Cup song, and the white fans had cheerfully adopted it as their own.

They needed a bit of help, though, with both the music and the words. They needed, as the Springboks had with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, a singing coach. This was where Dan Moyane entered the picture … He was co-hosting a 6am-to-9am radio show with an Irish-born former rugby player called John Robbie who had played for the British Lions against the Springboks in 1980. The duo were very popular, and their blend of easy banter and serious political discussion was one of the more palpable contributions that emerged from civil society to help precipitate South Africa’s political changes…

The Rugby World Cup gave them plenty to talk about. For Robbie it was a dream come true, an opportunity to reconcile his two passions, rugby and racial reconciliation in South Africa. Moyane was not so sure at first. Shaking off the associations the Springboks triggered in his mind was no easier for him than it was for any other black person. He and Robbie would argue on air about rugby. Until the inaugural game against Australia.

Over the next month, much of the morning radio show consisted of Moyane playing the naïve interrogator to Robbie’s worldly-wise rugby man.

One day they played Shosholoza on air … but when Robbie asked Moyane for his opinion, he replied that, for him, the spirit of the song ought to be more raw. “It was a song of encouragement, of hope sung by men far away from their families who were working hard now but would be catching the train home soon enough.”

Moyane told Robbie that this was not a song designed, in his view, for heavily produced choral arrangements. “I felt it as a song to be sung with gusto, with go-for-it street passion, with heart and guts.” So Robbie said, “OK, why don’t you sing it then, Dan? Show us how it’s done.” And Dan Moyane did. He belted out a couple of bars. “It was the first time I’d ever sung like that on air, and within seconds the telephone lines into the studio were red-hot …”

Soon, local music producers were calling Moyane too. Within 10 days he had recorded and produced his own version of Shosholoza with a choir from Soweto. “The song was a smash hit.”

All this was astounding enough, but nothing compared with what was to come.

A week before the final, after South Africa had beaten France, the World Cup organisers invited him to lead the fans in song at Ellis Park an hour before the game against the All Blacks.

…At 2pm, he walked out on to the field. Moyane’s version of Shosholoza had been blaring from the sound system as fans filtered into the stadium; now they would all sing it together. Moyane walked up to the microphone and asked: “Do you hear me?”

Sixty-two thousand fans bellowed back: “YES!”

“OK, to make sure you really are hearing me, can we have some silence now?” Ellis Park went suddenly quiet. Then the Zulu words of the song came up on the big screens at either end of the stadium. Into the silence, Moyane declared: “We will sing the song to drown the All Blacks out of the stadium!” and a vast cheer went up. First he read the words aloud with the crowd, and then everyone began to sing.

… “All kinds of emotions and thoughts flooded through my head,” Moyane said. “Images came to my mind of 1976, of my friends being jailed, people I knew who these very people - or people close to them, at any rate - had tortured and killed. But then I also thought, what a gesture on these people’s part! They were repaying us for letting them keep the green jersey. This was a black street song, a soccer song, a migrant workers’ song, a prisoner’s song. It was an amazing example of crossing the lines, of hearts changing.”

And of people revving up for a big game. What came next raised the decibel levels even higher. Blame the protagonist of act two of the pre-game show, a SA Airways pilot called Laurie Kay … He was one of those English-speaking white men who, by a quirk of family circumstances that had affected two million others like him, just happened to have ended up living in the southern tip of Africa.

“I am not proud to say it now,” he said, “but the truth is that I was an utterly apolitical white person who voted Nat.”

The first seedlings of a political conscience emerged within Kay shortly after Mandela’s prison release. They were both on an SAA flight from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town. It was a Boeing 747 and Kay was the captain.

“It was my first and last face-to-face encounter with Nelson Mandela. I got a message that he wished to see me. So I stepped out of the cockpit and found that he was with his wife, Winnie. They were on seats 1D and 1F - I’ll never forget it,” said Kay. “The moment he saw me he stood up. I said, ‘No, please,’ but he insisted and he stood up and greeted me and shook my hand. It never, ever happened to me before or since with a passenger. For me it was transforming. The courtesy and respect of his gesture …

“Until then he was another black face and name who may have been a threat to my way of life. I was exposed to the Afrikaans mentality, and that, while I thought little about politics, was what shaped me.”

With thanks to the Cape Argus

Aussie journo Spiro Zavos finds it quite difficult to say nice things about the Boks. So when I stumbled on this little piece I just had to share it:

“The Springboks destruction of the Wallabies was the sort of defeat that gives massacres a bad name. This was a thrashing, a walloping and a devastation.

Go through the thesaurus to find all the words for a massacre - a general slaughter, utter defeat, destruction and so on - and you get a feel for what happened at the citadel of Afrikaner rugby pride and power, Coca-Cola (formerly Ellis) Park in Johannesburg.

The Springboks were the ferocious mongols of Ghengis Khan: and the Wallabies were the hapless villagers put to the sword and fire with a vengeance and brutality.

In the manner of wiping away the blood from a victim, lets get some of the statistics out of the way.

This was the greatest margin of defeat for a Wallaby side, 45 points in arrears, since the team started playing Test rugby in 1899.

It was the second-largest points total conceded since that awful day in 1997 at Pretoria when the Springboks ran riot and scored a total of 61 points to 22…”

To read the remainder from The Roar, click here

Writing in the Pretoria News, Peter Bills reveals how bad things in the Bok camp have got:

“Unless you believe that rabbits really can be plucked out of conjuror’s hats, then Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has a critical decision to make this Monday morning.

Humiliated by the Durban crowd after South Africa’s latest abject defeat, De Villiers faces probably the key moment of his entire career.

He either makes the decision to walk away from the Springbok job, accepting that playing with Jake White’s retreads is no way to embrace a new philosophy but that he isn’t brave enough to omit them, or he picks a team that just might be capable of producing the game he seeks.

For sure, the present one isn’t. Sources talk of a fractured Springbok camp, of some players who wish only for De Villiers to fail and resign; of others who cannot understand his policy of retaining World Cup winners who simply aren’t delivering any more and others who are plainly bewildered by the goings-on at the highest level of South African rugby.

There is much talk of the senior players virtually taking training off, and of key figures undermining the coach by preaching a completely different philosophy to the one he espouses.”

With thanks to the Pretoria News