With just more than a month to go to the beginning of the World Cup, the superstitious among the 30-man squad chosen by the South African selectors will be avoiding black cats, ladders, people whose eyebrows meet in the middle and the other bad omens too numerous to mention.
Unfortunately for Pierre Spies the bad luck has struck already. He has been diagnosed with clotting on the lungs, an inherited disease.
Shortly after the South African Rugby Union (Saru) issued a press release explaining that Spies would not be allowed to play contact sport for between six and eight months, another missive arrived announcing that the back rower’s replacement was hooker Bismarck du Plessis.
It was a little unusual that coach Jake White did not have three ÂÂhookers in his squad initially and Du Plessis’s inclusion remedied that. There is plenty of cover at number eight in the squad, said Saru, with Juan Smith, Danie Rossouw and Bob Skinstad all having played there in the green and gold in the past 12 months.
In which case, why were there so many in the first place, or have we embarked on another World Cup campaign where no one is allowed to question the presence of Skinstad?
One of the reasons for the ÂÂinclusion of Du Plessis as Spies’s replacement might have been revealed by the official reaction to the news that Gary Botha has signed a three-year deal to play for Harlequins in ÂÂLondon.
Saru president Oregan Hoskins seemed aghast at the news, wondering how a 25-year-old could pass up the job of Springbok hooker that has been waiting patiently for him since John Smit announced his intention to play in France after the World Cup.
Botha is not a dummy. He has earned nine Springbok caps in three years because Smit stood in his way. Last year he had to make way for Chilliboy Ralepele, Smit’s protégé and Saru’s ÂÂpreferred bidder for the job of national captain when the post becomes vacant.
The fact that Ralepele has spent this year injured has given Botha opportunities he would not ÂÂotherwise have had.
Then there is Du Plessis, three years younger than Botha and identified at 17 as a future great.
Spies’s unfortunate withdrawal allowed Saru to show Botha what it thought about his plan to jump ship, which only goes to show that there is one rule for some and another for ÂÂothers.
Du Plessis had every right to expect to hear his name read out two weeks ago, but now he has been included as, apparently, a stalking horse. Botha has achieved all there is to achieve in the domestic game, winning the Super 14 with the Bulls and the Currie Cup with the Blue Bulls. He won the Under 21 World Cup with White as coach in 2002 and is part of a Springbok World Cup squad that has a great chance of winning this year’s tournament.
After three years with Harlequins Botha will be 28 and in the prime of his career, hardened in the furnace of tight-forward play in the English Premiership and ready to give his experience to the 2011 World Cup campaign. How dare Saru suggest that he is being somehow unpatriotic in furthering his career abroad?
As an example of the different strokes Saru gives to different folks, remember how it lauded Smit when he declared his intention to move to France. The Springbok captain with the longest tenure in history is deemed to have given all that is required to his national side at the age of 29.
Then there is the strange case of Victor Matfield. The Bulls captain became the first lock forward to captain the Boks when Smit injured himself against the Wallabies in June. In the week building up to Matfield’s debut at the helm the story broke that he, too, had signed to play in France after the World Cup.
Did Saru register its umbrage at that time? Quite the opposite: Springbok manager Zola Yeye marched into the first press conference of the week and calmly announced that Matfield would not be answering questions concerning his French sojourn. Since those were the only questions anyone really wanted to ask, it was quite a brief gathering. Among all this duplicity, news has leaked out that the 30-man squad has agreed among themselves how to distribute the money that will come their way, win or lose in the World Cup.
It will be distributed evenly among the whole squad. Odd how the players can reach such an evenhanded conclusion, but the administrators continue to pull in different directions.