The Boks coach said a lot of good things in his after-match speech: “Eye-gouging is something that we as a team, and especially me, will never condone. Along with biting, head-butting and spear-tackling – all those things that don’t belong in the game”.
“I am against anything that is not in the spirit of the game.”
And …
“But we would never ever encourage anybody to be part of anything negative or bringing the game into disrepute. We want to promote the game among our youth. We want this game to be the biggest nation-building tool there ever can be. By encouraging stuff like that then we are fighting a lost cause. I would never, ever encourage it.”
But then he said …
“Let me tell you, if you look at the footage properly and you know the man you are working with properly, then you can see why I said it is not a yellow card.”
What footage was he looking at? Not the one I saw.
He was right about it not being a yellow card – it was a red one. Knowing the man has nothing to do with what the footage showed. It was blatant thuggery.
I suspect Burger is a good sort of a bloke. Plays hard, cops knocks and is the type who will be the first to buy a beer for his opposing number after the game. But in this instance he made a very bad mistake.
De Villiers appears to be as blind to that as Bryce Lawrence was when he said, “A yellow card at least”.
It’s not just refs who are blind sometimes.
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