Lions Pride

This week 11 of South Africa’s rugby unions, together with SARU, voted the Lions out of Super Rugby. While superficially this may seem a simple matter, it’s not.

Basically, these 11 unions, and SARU, said that SA rugby can do without the Golden Lions Rugby Union, their clubs, their junior rugby structures and their schools rugby structures. These 11 unions said that, compared to three minor unions who haven’t achieved anything of note in their entire existence, the GLRU is irrelevant.

Let’s face it, with their struggles over the last year or so, the chances of the GLRU surviving, financially once they lose their sponsors or competitively once they lose their best players, is minimal. But that’s what SA’s rugby unions and bosses decided they want – South African rugby without the Lions or any of their subordinate structures.

It is a difficult decision for me as a longtime Lions supporter to accept but reading the comments on many of the web sites it seems that most people are OK with it. They accept the fact that the politicians have taken over SA rugby.

Oh, they will complain when the Springbok emblem finally disappears in a year or to but they will accept that as well.

Let me tell you: any rugby supporter who accepts the way the Lions were stabbed in the back by the senior unions who promised their support (currently the only thing that is certain is that the Free State Rugby Union is one of the back stabbers but with only two unions voting for the Lions at least one of the Sharks, WP or Blue Bulls also stabbed us in the back), any supporter who continues to support these unions deserve it when the Springbok emblem disappears, they deserve it when the Springbok team includes players not selected on merit, they deserve everything they get in future.

The way I feel at the moment I will not be watching Super Rugby anymore, I will not support a Springbok team that includes players from unions that voted to kill off the Lions; in short, I will not support South African rugby.

I deleted my Baylion blog after SARU’s decision was known and later created this one but maybe that was a mistake. I gave it a lot of thought today, this whole issue is still too raw and maybe I need to take a break for a while.

But for the the moment:

Go Golden Lions!!!

Go All Blacks!!!

Edit: Having slept on it I think I will try and use this blog to get some closure, hopefully without out being too negative.