Goodbye World Cup

As Dan Retief, one of the shrewder SA rugby analysts, has pointed out, we finally get our Super rugby going, with two SA teams in the final, and the country starts getting into a winning mindset - and literally within the hour, the politicians and administrators rumble in with the kind of heavy-handed authoritarian behaviour that we last saw from the Broederbond, completely overriding the coach and the selectors, and putting an immediate dampener on everything.

And once again, the overseas pundits shake their heads in complete disbelief at what a bunch of clowns we are.

This doesn't bode at all well for what lies in store as we prepare for the World Cup, so I'm going to go on record right now, and pray that I am proved wrong.

I reckon two things are certain in our immediate rugby future:

1. We are not going to be allowed to select our best team for the World Cup.
2. We are therefore not going to win it.

And one other thing I've decided - just as many of us supported the All Blacks in the days when Springbok teams were picked along racial lines during apartheid - if this year's Springbok team is picked on race, I'm going to support the All Blacks again, as my own personal protest against Apartheid 2007, ANC style.