Our only chance
THERE'S a slim chance we can appeal against the outcome of Saturday's Test against the All Blacks. They were sailing under false colours, you see. At the flags and anthems ceremony before kick-off, they were displaying not the New Zealand flag but the Blue Ensign.
The Blue Ensign is the flag of the British merchant navy if the skipper happens to be on the Royal Naval Reserve (otherwise the ships fly the Red Ensign).
The New Zealand flag is the Blue Ensign with the Southern Cross on it, the stars in red against white. That is not the flag that was displayed at the pre-match ceremony.
It's a slim chance, but I'm afraid it's all I can offer. Otherwise the thing was a rout, South Africa's worst calamity since Tobruk.
We held our own up front and our fellows tackled their socks off, to be sure. It was stirring. But they had no answer to the silky, unhurried handling of the All Blacks, the endless recycling of the ball. In the end you run out of tacklers. The All Blacks were able to make it look like beach rugby.
Nobody likes losing but for a crammed King's Park it was a spectacle of superb rugby. And at least it highlighted once and for all – and beyond argument – that the All Blacks have progressed to a new level of the game.
Talk of going back to "traditional" Blue Bulls rugby is facile. So is talk of sacking the coaching staff. Lack of continuity in coaching has been a major part of our problem.
Roll on the Rugby Indaba. It needs to look seriously at the structure of South African rugby, where the club game has been marginalised. It has to ask what has happened to the Currie Cup, the furnace that produced the great Bok sides of the past. It has to look at professionalisation of coaching at all levels.
And some kind of strategy must be devised to keep young players in the country a few years, a counter to the exchange rate attraction overseas.
A luta continuha!
Twickers
AUSTRALIA played Argentina at Twickenham on Saturday. The idea apparently is to interest northern hemisphere rugby fans in the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship (a real razzle-dazzle name that – what hotshot PR firm dreamed it up?)
But here's an opportunity. Why not play more matches at Twickers, those that would have us travelling Down Under or to South America? Why not Super Rugby matches as well?
It would certainly suit us. London is much closer and it's direct south-north, eliminating the jetlag factor.
Who knows? It could end up with us playing in the European Cup and the Eleven (or maybe Twelve) Nations.
Tailpiece
A GUY is driving round the Bluff when he spots a sign: "Talking dog for sale". He stops, parks and rings the doorbell. The householder takes him through to the backyard. A nice-looking Labrador is sitting there.
"You talk?"
"Yep."
The guy is staggered. "Tell me your story."
"Well, I discovered I could talk when I was pretty young. I picked up the phone and dialled the American ambassador. Next thing the CIA were here. And they bought me and took me to America. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders because nobody figured a dog would be eavesdropping.
"I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years. But the jetting around was starting to get at me so I took a job at JF Kennedy airport, doing undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I was responsible for some spectacular busts and I got a whole bunch of medals.
"But then I got sick of it all and I came back here to the Bluff where I started out. I met a nice lady Labrador and we've had a couple of litters of puppies."
He turns to the householder. "How much are you selling this dog for?"
"Fifty bucks."
"Fifty bucks? You must be crazy! This is a wonder dog!"
"Nah, you get sick of his stories. He's a bullduster anyway. He's never been out of the yard."
Last word
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.
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