Rugby Hall of Fame
REFEREE Romain Poite joins Bryce Lawrence in the Rugby Hall of Fame. The IRB has cleared Bismarck du Plessis of his red card. But has anyone on the IRB given thought to amending the red card system?
You're always going to get duff refereeing decisions. You really can't blame the ref for a bad decision in the heat of the moment, any more than you often can't blame the player for a rash, split-second action. But should a duff decision be allowed to have such enormous consequences?
Last Saturday a world-wide rugby audience were on the edge of their seats for the clash between the Springboks and the All Blacks. It was a thrilling if somewhat error-strewn encounter. Then it suddenly ended with Du Plessis being red-carded on what amounted to a technicality. The contest was over, the spectacle gone. It became a grim, one-sided struggle, the outcome never in doubt.
People paid good money for tickets to Eden Park. People bought air tickets from South Africa and all over the world. The sponsors and the TV networks coughed up a fortune. And all for this fiasco?
Red-card the player by all means. You can argue afterwards about whether it was justified. But should the match then be put on the scrapheap? Why not let the red-carded player be replaced from the bench so the match can continue as an even contest?
This is no argument for condoning illegal play. In this professional era it ought to be possible to make the financial consequences of a red card so severe – fines, suspension – that deliberate illegal play would not be an option.
This isn't Pofadder versus Klipfontein, it's rugby on a world stage. The show must go on.
Kiwi phone-in
THAT tackle by Du Plessis on Dan Carter – I'm told a New Zealand radio station held a phone-in and Kiwi fans said it was not only perfectly legal, it was the best tackle they'd ever seen.
Ja, tog.
Ancient Rome
SOME say rugby has become a gladiatorial contest. World-wide TV has made it an equivalent, in a gigantic scale, of the Coliseum in ancient Rome.
But who ever heard of the Romans red-carding the lions for playing dirty against the Christians? The show went on.
Get with it!
STILL with rugby, is it not time Sanzar found a more arresting and evocative name for the southern hemisphere international competition? "The Rugby Championship" sounds like something suggested by Aunt Ermintrude as she knits by the fireside.
What would be wrong with "Four Nations"? Rugby fans are numerate as well as literate and would know the difference between the Four Nations and the Six Nations.
Presidential zebras
HELP – I'm seeing stripes in front of my eyes! Here's more on zebras being used as draught animals in the early days.
Muriel Maple, of Hilton, outside Maritzburg, used to live in Kroonstad and was once given a photographic negative on glass which showed the President of the Orange Free State in a cart being drawn by zebras and donkeys.
It came from an old-timer and had been taken during the Anglo/Boer War when the Boer capital was moved to Kroonstad after Bloemfontein fell to the British. She had it for years but has unfortunately now mislaid it in a series of moves about the country.
She says she was always under the impression the photograph had been of President Brand – but it must surely have been President Steyn because Brand died before the war.
No matter. The point is that zebras were being used at high level in the Free State.
Crown City
KROONSTAD translates as "Crown City." It seems an unlikely name for a place in the Free State and I always imagined it came from the surname Kroon, which is fairly common.
But it turns out the town is actually named after a horse named Kroon, that drowned at a drift in the nearby river.
Remember where you read it first!
Memory foam
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "I bought a memory foam mattress, but it had Alzheimer's."
Tailpiece
"So how's your new phone?"
"Mostly great but it's got some weird pre-installed apps. This one makes my husband look fat and ugly. It's called 'Camera'."
Last word
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
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