A Superrugby.co.za survey shows 70% of  more than three thousand online voters support Jack Whites decision to send a watered down team down under. Our rugby administrators back him whole heartedly.

This has to lead us to ask…where exactly is rugby going?

Okay the World Cup is important, but are matches against our southern hemisphere giants of Australia and New Zealand not that important any longer?  Can anyone imagine 10 years ago not sending anything but your very best team to face the likes of the Wallabies and All Blacks?

We are not playing dinkum Namibia, for heavens sakes. We are playing the Wallabies and the Blacks in there own back yards.  Victories off shore are rare enough with full strength teams, let alone trying to achieve this with a 2nd and 3rd team.

Why not just come out and say that we have thrown these matches.  We have agreed to lose these matches.  We have conceded Tri Nation defeat before we have left South Africa.

Is the World Cup really the be all and all, that it dictates policies and selection years before the event takes place?  Sure, everyone wants to win the World Cup.  But  not everyone wants to spend four years losing tests, building for a World Cup, and not picking the right team on the day.  Some of our more infamous losses have been justified as 'World Cup planning'.

It’s a load of bullshit.

If the World Cup dictates how we select players years before the friggin event, if it dictates what teams we send and don’t send, if it dictates our policies, if it starts resulting in our sending weakened teams to play the All Blacks and Wallabies, I think I would rather see the death of a competition, that to me is really a farce.  The best team can have one bad day in the tourney, and will spend the next four years NOT BEING the world champion, the 140-0 score lines in the opening rounds… I don’t get on the word cup hype.  Actually only start looking forward to the tourney come quarter finals time.  The first three weeks are dead boring for me.

In between World Cup years, winning tests should never be compromised and now the Boks, join the northern hemisphere fiasco of sending second rate sides.

England and France toured the southern hemisphere with second bit teams absent of all their big names.  Instead of New Zealand and South African fans getting all hyped for what should have been mouth watering contest of rugby with northern hemisphere giants, supporters have to endure boring score lines exceeding 50s and 60s against teams who are big brand names in the world of rugby.   Rugby is actually the real loser here. I looked forward more to Super 14 rugby matches than I did the Boks verse England test.  Fark, I look forward more to a Currie Cup match than watching the Boks play a second rate English side.

Historically proud rugby nations such as England and France no longer mind 60 point scores any against their once proud jersey’s and now the Boks join suit. Where is rugby heading?

The worst thing that ever happened to South African rugby was the arrival of Jake White.  And though he started with a bang with a Tri Nations crown, he has bogged the Springboks with bizarre selections, he has shown arrogance personified, shut the door completely on players instead of laying down the challenge to them to fight their way into the Bok team, confused the shit out of the rugby world with mind boggling decisions, game plans and selections, he single handedly created the Luke Watson saga by doggedly sticking to his guns that he would never select the player (even though there was merit in a Watson call up last year … Watson’s form was excellent then… when Schalk Burger was injured and the Boks were getting cleaned up at loose forward… the door should never be shut on any SA player), thereby giving the blood hounding politicians ammunition to read what they will into it. Remember the old fetcher debate and now he has set a new and dangerous precedent for southern hemisphere rugby. A watered down team for an All Black test.

Un.  Fuckin.  Believable.

His argument of players needing rest hold no merit for me. He rested the Boks through last years Currie Cup campaign, he rested them at the end of the year tour to Europe, where we endured defeats against England and Ireland in the name of the World Cup. He had games against Samoa and two against a third rate English side to rest his frontline players. He has this week to rest his players. And he has a further ten weeks prior to World Cup time to rest his players. A further three (okay two) meaningless round robin games before the semi’s to rest his players. We lost our best players to the Currie Cup last year, thanks to the World Cup. We lost our best players to the EOYT thanks to the World Cup and now we go into an away leg of the Tri Nations without our top players, again thanks to the World Cup. Please forgive me if I am now starting to say…fuck the World Cup if it means devaluing everything special in our rugby, from our domestic competition right through to the ultimate tests down under.

With talk of Africanised rugby next year and a minimum quota of ten black starting players…and Pieter de Villiers our next coach…this years Tri Nations was probably our last opportunity in the next fifty years to crack a couple of wins down under and with the likes of Habana, Fourie du Preez, John Smit , Andries Pretorious etc, all coming back from injury, we had a team that was very capable of achieving just that in either Australia or New Zealand, or both.

Where exactly is rugby heading?  Can't wait for World Cup to come and go, and with it Jake White and any new scary precedents he may be wanting to set for Bok and southern hemisphere rugby.