Allan Massie: South Africa's storming of Six Nations deserves response laced with stiff conservatism
We have seldom expected to win in Wales and the low expectation has usually been justified by the result. Many of the matches were close, defeat coming by a single score, but victories came only in 1962, 1982,1984, 1990, 1996 and 2002. More often that not, we were sent home to think again. If last Saturday’s result was even more disappointing than most, it was because we had more reason than usual to think not only that we might win, but that we would.
It is still difficult to see why we didn’t, or rather why a talented team that had played with such composure and intelligence against England should have been so ragged, making mistakes and poor decisions, and giving away thoughtless penalties. Wales, it should be said, played a limited game with determination, and, sadly, with better concentration than we displayed. So a game that should have been won slipped away and it’s fair to say that only two or three Scottish players came out of the match without damage to their reputation.
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Hide AdSo we let this match slip, and are still due to face France and Ireland who last week played a brilliant match in Paris, some way above any other so fa seen in this year’s tournament. Uphill work ahead when France come to Murrayfield next week, uphill work but also a chance for redemption.
Equally dismaying this week has been the talk of South Africa applying for membership of the Six Nations which, if they are admitted, would be Seven. This can’t happen till 2025 because South Africa is contractually bound to the southern hemisphere’s Rugby Championship for its next three seasons, can’t happen till that contract is fulfilled, and shouldn’t happen at all.
Writing in The Times yesterday, Stuart Barnes began with just three words, or rather, one word repeated thrice: Money, Money, Money. South Africa’s admission would be great news for the private equity company CVC that now has a share in the tournament and great news for the TV companies, but not for anyone else. “What isn’t acceptable,” he wrote, “is the damage this financially fabulous tournament would do to those nations on the outside, in particular New Zealand and Australia, but also the Pacific Island and Argentina.”
He is dead right. Two things would be lost: first, the historic rivalry of the All Blacks and the Springboks, for more than a 100 years the two greatest and strongest rugby-playing nations. “The loss of South Africa as a regular tournament partner for the southern hemisphere’s Ruby Championship would be catastrophic for the global game in general.” So it would.
It would also, though this concerns me less, be bad news for the Lions, for it would be ridiculous to stage a Lions tour and series against a fellow-nation of the northern hemisphere’s tournament, one against which England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales had been playing in our tournament a few weeks previously.
South Africa is seeking or is at least on the point of seeking membership of the northern hemisphere’s tournament partly because, unlike New Zealand and Australia, it has lost control of so many of its international team who now play their club rugby in Europe. Its domestic game isn’t strong enough, isn’t financially rich enough, to keep these players at home in South Africa. Well, bad luck. That’s for them to sort out, just as it is, or should be, for the SRU to find a way of making our domestic game strong enough and rich enough to retain Scottish internationals in Scotland.
Of course Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy have already foolishly opened the door to deeper South African participation in the European game by admitting their provincial sides to what used to be the Pro14 and is now the URC. This never looked like a good idea and now looks like a worse one. A league that already lacked a strong sense of identity now has a more diluted one, while the admission of four more clubs to what is now an 18-team “championship” has saddled us with a league structure that is finicky, complicated and unsatisfactory.
Long ago a president of the SRU said that when presented with a proposal for change, the union’s immediate response was to say “no”, then to think about it and say “no” again. Time for such stiff conservatism again.