Too Much of a Good Thing…

Too Much of a Good Thing…

Its five o'clock on a Saturday morning. Usually you would want nothing more than the sweet sound of silence.Suddenly the door bursts open and you wake to the sound of excitement. Dad’s screaming like a man possessed. The smell of coffee and anticipation is hanging in the air. No time for yawning, as the old chap enthusiastically almost brakes the door in an attempt to wake you. 

It’s an immediate adrenaline rush from the second you open your eyes. You've guessed it…

It’s the Springboks playing the mighty All Blacks in New Zealand.

The two top teams in world rugby gets to slug it out in what becomes the most anticipated 80 minutes of the last 12 months… you get to witness the “HAKA”, as if its performed within your living room, and better yet, you get to see the Boks accepting the challenge by a stare-off. 

Biscuits and sweet cakes are served with the coffee in order to chew on something as this match tends to be a real nerve snapper! This is the only time ever dad will offer you some of his “biltong” at five in the morning, so you literally grab it with both hands. Today is all about, real rugby rivalry.

Before rugby had turned professional, tests would only be played on tours, which in this case would only come round once every five to six years. We have been starved of this spectacle for more than a decade due to the political disarray South Africa had been in and evidently one could understand why the excitement is so highly contagious . Since the famous 1995 World Cup final featuring these two great rugby nations, they got to face each other twice a year and we would sometimes even be fortunate enough to be entertained no less than three times a year, in what was called the Tri Nations, also featuring Australia.

The “rude awakening” is one of my fondest childhood memories and a memory that’s fast becoming an idealistic dream for the future.  It seriously saddens me to think that my boy and I, will never get to enjoy this spectacle with the same hype, enthusiasm  and eagerness as we did in the late nineties. Now you might argue that I'm a wee bit cynical, and so it might be but don’t get me wrong, I'm all for the game being professional, but to what cost I wonder…

The magnitude of rugby we enjoy in the Southern Hemisphere is a topic immensely discussed the last couple of years and rightly so. Not only are the players facing hectic touring schedules, but the number of injuries has increased quite tremendously. Super Rugby transformed into a marathon where squad depth is as important as game plans and defensive structures. Gone are the days where the coach’s biggest predicament was selecting the 15 strongest players. Nowadays, the coach has to deal with player management, rotation policies and more medical reports than  Meredith Grey in Greys Anatomy…

Currently the 2015 Super Rugby season consist of 16 games per team. That’s 1280 minutes of possibly the toughest Rugby competition in the world. Now picture a scenario where a player like Handre Pollard plays a full eighty in all his team’s round robin matches, makes the inbound tour, Castle Lager Championship and plays all the matches on the year end tour, meaning that this player had basically played  2400 minutes of more or less  International Rugby, facing off against the very best of the best… Personally I’d consider this to be a suicide mission!!! Looking at the bigger picture though, we as spectators are spoilt so rotten, that we tend to lose the significance of it all.  Super Rugby has expanded to such an extent that it almost seems to lose its value. As a Springbok supporter, I'm not eager on what a Sonny Bill Williams or Julian Savea could be up to in the mighty black jersey, cause I get to watch them on telly week in and week out and I know all too well what they are capable of…

USA is not considered a rugby nation by any means, and yet they had a sell out crowd of 61 000 fans last year when the All Blacks played the Eagles at Soldier Field, Chicago. They wanted to see their very best taking on the world’s best and though the yanks were annihilated on the score board, they were never humiliated as a team, nor as a nation. In fact, that one night in Chicago went a long way and had meant more to the rugby playing community of America than anything they had ever seen. USA is starving for rugby and subsequently they should be fed, but we should all learn from their hunger and not forget that Southern Hemisphere rugby might be the fat kid suffering from obesity, not appreciating the value of rugby pumping in our veins…

I don’t mean to say that the international rugby games played per annum is too much, by no means. But what I do want to bring across is that too much Super rugby has definitely deprived us of what makes old traditional rivalries so nostalgic.

At this point I quite like the Six Nations format and I love the fact that they only get to play one another once a year. Its keeps the rivalry alive, the intensity up there and the crowd’s bottoms off their seats!

I didn't completely agree with Steve Hansen when he recently stated that rugby union is getting a tad

boring, but he did make a valid point though, and money might just be the one cup-cake we should not place above all else…  we should all fear for the day when the soul of sport and more in particular, rugby, is sold for fame and gold. Lately it’s become quite common for a international player to rather walk in the direction of domestic rugby. Facing that crossroad between domestic rugby and representing your country at its highest level is one where players all of a sudden has no shame on rather banking the cheque, and compromise the opportunity of wearing a jersey that so many others had bled for…    

I truly believe that in this case less will be more and less rugby evidently should be the way forward.