Well, we are well and truly into the end of year tour and to be honest, it feels like year end…
Just take a look around your offices. If you’re like me and work in an open plan office, you just need to sit up straight and look around to see the christmas decorations, people wearing jeans more regularly, spending more time at the canteen than usual. Everything seems to slow down… deadlines aren’t important anymore, the boss is more likely to give you a half day Friday off… the brain is busy shutting down… the body retaining a little more fat… and generally, people just don’t care anymore…
This is how I feel about rugby right now… I just don’t care. I couldn’t be ar$ed to give an opinion anymore, I literally don’t care if we win or lose anymore. It’s the Northern Hemisphere teams…. let’s be honest, we know we’re going to win… it’s not exciting anymore… the Super Rugby 58 million local derby’s , every second column saying how tired the “old guard” is bla bla bla bla bla… over it…
I want a break, I cannot watch rugby 12 months a year, its just not right. I miss the good old days, Cricket in the summer (Brilliant cricket in fact) and rugby in the winter. A hard fought Curri Cup (When it still meant something), A supremely hard Super 10/12 where the bottom log team had a realistic chance of beating a top of the log team. When we had almost no chance of winning overseas (Which just gave me extra drive to wake up at 4am to watch the cheetahs / springboks play)
It’s just too much… and you can see it in the blogs these days too (Supersport, Keo, News24) everyone punting the same crap and then we get little article’s like “We can beat them : Brown” or “Jean hasn’t forgotten” … come on guys? REALLY?? REALLY?????? It’s Scotland…. I’ll say it again… SCOTLAND? home to the incredibly untalented bunch of alcoholics in skirts… beautiful country, wonderful people and culture… but as a rugby team I rate them nearly as much as I rate the Cavaliers… and that’s saying something.
Skim down the Super Rugby crap, each team plays each team once. Top 4 team play round robin, Top 2 go through… there …. not 68 weeks of boredom, 17 weeks… high intensity, high quality… Then we have a 6 team Curri Cup (WITH ALL THE SPRINGBOKS) and a R5mil cash prize, make it worthwhile for the teams to play the best. I can see it now…
“The Currie Cup – The world’s oldest and richest tournament”
Then we finish it off with a 4 Nations shootout – home and away games – winner gets to decide the fixtures for the next season… more incentive…
and THEN… finally, we can have an end of the year tour… bleed new youngsters… and the Southern Hemisphere team to have the highest points difference… gets R5mil. Don’t comment below and say there isn’t money… oh yes there is… and don’t say that if will cause more injuries cause the couches with play the same guys over and over… ANY good coach bleeds young ones as he isn’t just looking at today, but also tomorrow… what this system in fact would do is encourage BETTER PLAYER MANAGEMENT and drive the central contracting system.
Finally, I know, A long rant… Finally… Let’s run our clubs like they do overseas. Privately owned businesses. The fact that a club cannot be wholly owned by a business man.. is tragic to say the least… It would do wonders for the player base, fitness and skill levels… and they don’t have to worry about empty stadiums because REAL business men know how to get bums on seats… it’s their livelyhood
That’s it for me for now, Yes, I am going to watch the Scotland game, but only because I am going to a braai and don’t feel like making small talk…
