Captain Cook, Friday, May 28

BRENDAN Venter, Director of Rugby with Saracens, is still not allowed to be on the touchline for tomorrow's Guinness Premiership final at Twickenham against Leicester. The Rugby Football Union (England) have reduced the touchline ban imposed on him for making abusive gestures to the crowd in an earlier match against Leicester, but not lifted it entirely. The ban still stands.

We are still not told what the abusive gestures were. Venter, of course, is a South African – a former Bok – but I think we can rule out a well-known local gesture of abuse. (One doesn't want to become too explicit but it involves the thumb).

Why we can rule that one out is that this gesture is strictly local, strictly South African. Use it in England and people merely look politely puzzled. It has no meaning there at all. No crowd could be insulted by it, no disciplinary panel would be convened, it's meaningless. It's very odd that it should have such a pungency here yet mean absolutely nothing overseas.

So one presumes Venter either gave the crowd the traditional twos-up or the American middle finger salute. As we discussed last week, twos-up derives from the Battle of Agincourt – Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George! – but the American middle finger is a bit of a mystery.

I'd always imagined it signified something rather vulgar – the woman who gave me the finger from her car the other day had vulgarity stamped all over her – but a reader tells me he's heard it has rather wholesome origins.

He says he's been told it comes from the way a person carries a contact lens on the tip of the middle finger. The gesture used to be accompanied by the phrase: "Is this your contact lens?" implying, I suppose, that the other person is visually incapacitated and somewhat scatterbrained.

This might be so, I suppose, but I can't see it starting a riot, nor could it be grounds for banning a rugby coach from the touchline. I think the RFU needs to come clean.

But all this is to digress. Two big 'uns tomorrow, of course. The Bulls (aka Northern Transvaal) versus the Stormers (aka Western Province) in Soweto and Saracens versus Leicester at Twickers for the Guinness Premiership.

When Northerns take on Province in the Super-14 final you don't get emotionally involved, it's a bit like kissing your cousin. Nor when Saracens play Leicester. But both should produce some splendid rugby.

I've tried to persuade Brendan Venter to fly out and watch with us in the boozer, seeing he's barred from the touchline at Twickers. At time of writing I was still waiting for his response. Theoretically it's still possible.

Brendan needs to blow off steam, make pungently abusive gestures to all and sundry without those stick-in-the-muds from the RFU coming down on him like a ton of bricks. He'd fit neatly into our rugby colloquium, where abusive gestures are the order of the day. If we can't get him I'll try to track down that woman driver who gave me the finger, American-style.

Let the good times roll!