Soft Saffies

How soft is South African rugby, we're led to believe that these big hairy back behemoths are rough and ready always providing a stern test of physical combativeness. But what have they done on the tour of Aust. and NZ, left the best 20 players behind and the reason, they've played 5 tests in a row and a combination of injury and fatigue have taken hold of their squad! What a load of absolute rubbish, lets look at what is really going on here, firstly the 3 tests they played before the Tri Nations started were against the English B squad (lets be honest, England don't really have an A squad at the moment!) two tests and one against Samoa (another heavy weight opponent!).

These three tests were nothing better then opposed contact training sessions and really shouldn't have been classified with test status, neither should the first couple of tests played by Aust. and NZ against substandard opponents.The Springboks only had to play two more TESTS (real ones) before they would have the luxury of a two month break before their first RWC match against.....Samoa!

Surely that is more then ample time to recover from fatigue and any minor injury concerns! What I believe happened is as soon as they lost that game to the All Blacks in Durban they pretty much gave up hope of winning the Tri Nations and so thought it best to protect their players from possible injuries, but to quote Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun movies "you take your chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street or sticking your face in a fan"!

In short injuries will and can happen at any time and what the S.A rugby board has done is laughable and should be treated with disdain by the ARU and NZRU, who should be seeking compensation on the grounds that it isn't in the spirit of the contract and should then look to distance themselves from S.A rugby in the future, from super 14 to Tri Nations.
I was hoping that the Wallabies would hand out a thrashing last weekend but it was wishful thinking, hopefully the All Blacks can put 60 points on them this weekend!!

Don't get me wrong I know it's not the players fault, this sits squarely on the S.A rugby board’s shoulders.

Ahh, that feels better, till next time.