The late lamented Steve Strydom had no doubt there was a place for it, he just didn’t know what to call it. Video ref? Telly ref? Too familiar. So it became the television match official, or the TMO. Only those involved with the administration of the laws ever use either of those terms, of course.
The performances of South African teams in the Super 14 are no reason to write off the Springboks. It is traditionally about now that we start to worry about the Springboks. A bunch of misfiring South African Super 14 teams and a host of glittering antipodean stars make pessimists of us all.
The new president of the South African Rugby Union has been in power for a week. Like all his predecessors since readmission in 1992, Oregan Hoskins was elected not because of who he was, but who he wasn’t. Given the two years of turmoil that preceded last Friday’s vote, it’s hard to remember that Hoskins’s predecessor was welcomed as warmly as the likeable Durban lawyer.
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/ 17 February 2006
If the organisers of the Super 14 wanted a dramatic start to the new competition, then week one certainly provided it. There were five away wins and the only teams to break the sequence came, respectively, top and bottom of the log in the 2005 Super 12. Not many expected the much-maligned Sharks to beat the Chiefs in Durban.
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/ 10 February 2006
The Super 14 begins this weekend with a little more of a whimper than a bang and none of the South African franchises has yet signed the participation agreement for the competition. Crisis? What crisis? This is merely business as usual for the game of rugby union in this country.
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/ 3 February 2006
It began life as the Super 6, with state sides from Australia and New Zealand joined by Western Samoa. When South Africa was readmitted to the international fold it became the Super 10 and when the game went professional at the end of the 1995 World Cup it expanded into the Super 12. Now the Super 12 is dead. Long live the Super 14.
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/ 2 December 2005
It’s the end of an era at Sun City this week. The ”Million Dollar” that inflation forced to become the ”Two Million Dollar” and then the ”Nedbank Golf Challenge” will have a celebratory party on Sunday night, before reappearing in a markedly different guise next year. No one is prepared to reveal the sponsor’s plans for the tournament just yet.
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/ 25 November 2005
Since readmission the true litmus test of the health, or otherwise, of Springbok rugby has tended to come against France. In 1992 Naas Botha’s team won their first overseas Test in more than a decade 20-15. It was a result owing everything to passion, and a week later when something more was required to win in Paris, South Africa went down 29-16.
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/ 18 November 2005
The toughest season in Springbok history has two games left and it is some measure of the renaissance achieved under coach Jake White that both games could be lost and no one would be calling for his head. White’s team lost just once in the Tri-Nations and came within five minutes of winning that game against New Zealand.
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/ 4 November 2005
There have been strong links between the Springboks and the Pumas since 1965, when Danie Craven took it upon himself to give the South American game a leg up. Forty years later, Jake White’s Springboks can boast a massive pack of forwards, but no one is kidding himself that Saturday’s Test match will be a pushover.