This is an extremely dubious allegation mainly because South Africans don’t use the c-t word, the one we use starts with a p and ends with an s with a zero and an e in between.

If you say white side as in “On the white side” in Afrikaans, its “wit kant” that sounds like you are saying “white c.t”. You can google translate it if you want.

Is all in the nicknames like Eskom, Andre the Giant / Agent of Chaos, Top Dog, Doogz, Gazza, Thor, Bud, Plum, Kwagga, Sous etc.

They even have nicknames in African languages. Translate for you: Marx – Loaf of bread, Kholisi – Concrete truck with no reverse gear, Lood – Tomatoes, Faf – a shot glass, AM – Three shots, Kwagga -Wrong Turn that’s about his broken nose, Mostert -Universal Soldier or 440 referring to a 440ml can of beer, Malherbe-Bud Spencer, Bongi- meanest bloke in the village, Koch/ Mr Incredible, Willie/ guy who likes to dance a lot & Kitshoff – Spicy plum.

I think the Bud Spencer & Mr. Incredible are the most fitting.

That’s right, blame the Aussies, blame the Europeans, blame the dog but just don’t blame the people responsible for your misery, yourselves.

The Aussies had nothing to do with the NZRU unilaterally deciding to kick South Africa out of Super Rugby and to go off and start their own new competition.

They have their new competition but that does not stop them does it. More complaints, more whining and more winging…

How you Aussies tolerate these clowns is beyond me.

Maybe Australia should look to join European club or South Africans in a new competition that excludes these clowns.

Food for thought.

IMHO the gap between the codes is a lot bigger than most think it is and it is getting bigger. In this day and age teams look for weaknesses to exploit and do so ruthlessly at test level. Springboks vs Suliasi Vunivalu as a recent example is we can all relate to. His defensive reads were poor, not only ball in hand attacks but glaringly obvious against Springboks kicking game. A yellow card penalty try and Arendse’s 3 against him, one of which was a 1 on 3 situation that should never have been scored at that level.

I will be surprised if Hooper ever plays against the Springboks again. Saffas have spent the past two seasons brutalizing open side flankers of similar stature as Hooper and perfecting their art playing in European competitions.

EJ obviously missed the Edinburgh vs Lions match in URC 2022 where Hamish Watson got absolutely destroyed by the 19-year-old Ruben Venter. Springboks were targeting him every opportunity they got proving a very effective tactic to take him out of the game.

Well, it is Stephen Jones making these comments so they should be taken with a pinch of salt. The man knows very little about rugby and even less about what it takes to run the sport profitably. The English clubs are drowning in debt and their bankruptcy is inevitable unless they find some way of drastically increasing revenues…

Everybody already knows that there was a 169% increase in broadcast audience on previous Pro14 campaign when they added SA Rugby to the URC, however, that was inevitable considering the massive clout of the SA Broadcaster SuperSport with its over 20 million subscribers.

The EPCR’s current global broadcast audience is around 38.8 million so it is going to be very interesting to see what the increase is due to SA Rugby’s participation. When they do, everybody is going to throw it at Stephen Jones for him eat it.

Some interesting info is that the URC broadcast deal is worth more than the English Premiership, and that the EPCR Champions & Challenge Cups are being broadcast in even more countries now than previous and all thanks to the inclusion of SA.

By the way, we get the French Top14 in SA on free to air and last year we averaged of 256,000 viewers per match. We also get the local club rugby competitions on free to air that averaged 325,000 and the related weekly highlights show attracted an average of 195,000 viewers per episode.

This is also one of the main contributors to the massive decline in Super Rugby viewers in SA, just way too much competition for the audience. Franky speaking, I do not see SuperSport continuing to broadcast Super Rugby for much longer when they are struggling to get an average of 30,000 viewers per match and free to air is raking in more than 15 times the viewers from the Top14 and local club rugby.

EPCR is new to the SA so it might take a season or two for the supporters to get on board fully but that will eventually happen when our teams get used to the competition and we start seeing more big-name players and teams taking on our franchises.

For me personally the EPCR Champions & Challenge cups together with the URC has been a bit of an overload of rugby. Just not enough time to watch all the games live so have to watch reruns of a lot of them during the week. Can’t complain though as I am loving every minute of it.

Not going to happen ozinsa, not in a million years. Way too much damage was done by NZR to ever repair the relationship.

CMP, don’t get yourself worked up over this mate. Our Australasian counterparts have swallowed the NZR bs hook, line and sinker that this is all SA Rugby’s fault and that they were the ones threatening to pull out. The truth and the whole story will eventually come out.

Colin, NZR leaked their decision to the media to inform SA Rugby & UAR. They then refused to accept telephone calls from both SA Rugby & UAR for over a week. Ended up having to go through the RA to get to the bottom of it all.

This part should answer your question – “When Australia was going through bad times, we sacrificed our broadcast money so they could stay alive”. SA Rugby recently backing RA’s bid for the RWC another example.

NH, I must confess that I am liking URC chief Martin Anayi more and more every day. The man just has his head in the right place and is taking the organisation in the right direction. I doubt there are too many complaints from the individual unions, SA Rugby seem to be very pleased and I have not heard even a squeak from the Scots.

I won’t be surprised if the URC & Premiership are already talking about some kind of merger rather than getting into of war or competition over money. The recent bundling up of European Champions Cup, URC and Top14 rugby into one TV package for American audiences is a giant move but I have a concern that it does not include the Premiership. Maybe this is an indication that they are considering it so who knows. All I know is that something needs to happen to get the Prem out of this hole they are in.

Turns out that bus had 18 carat gold mag wheels, a big URC log on it and came with a TV deal worth £55m a year.

Just a rumour mate. The Cheetahs know they are not wanted or welcome, besides the only reason SRP would want the Cheetahs is so that they could get a broadcast deal with Europe. SANZAAR all over a gain for zero benefit…

Good move by the way, even if it was forced on them. Turns out the URC broadcast deal is worth more than the Premierships so not a bad move at all.
Biggest positive of the move North is that the guys running the URC are not full of BS like SANZAAR. Massive amount of co-operation going on. Heck the URC share a London office with Premiership Rugby and Six Nations Rugby so they are not small fry.

Fiwi, I don’t think anybody can explain it. What the NZR did is not logical so why even bother? SA Rugby’s president Mark Alexander recently broke his silence on the matter:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/rugby/arid-40957547.html

For AUS the biggest take away is this part – “When Australia was going through bad times, we sacrificed our broadcast money so they could stay alive”.
SA Rugby also still backed ARU’s RWC bid. At least some people know who their mates are … Judging by the cold shoulder Robinson received with his recent visit to SA, I sincerely doubt NZR will ever be granted the same backing ever again.

I read on Super Sport’s news feed a while back that the SA teams have a guaranteed GBP 250,000 / Euro 300,000 / ZAR 5 million coming their way because they qualified to play in Europe next year. Another thing I read up on the EPCR rules is the match day attendance fees are split equally between the teams and not kept by the home team.

You may or may not have realised this yet but South African’s have indeed already moved on. We are loving the URC and playing in the NH. In hind sight, SARU should have left SANZAAR a long time ago. From what I have heard is that the ARU have been planning to break away from NZR for awhile already and are extremely serious about doing it.

Me personally, I think the best thing for Australia is to have their own domestic competition similar to the Currie Cup simply because of the intense tribalism within the Australian culture.

Time for Australia to look after themselves before its too late.

How has the NZRU treated its partners? Very badly to be honest. It is a well known that they have always been the toxic element within SANZAAR always wanting a bigger piece of the pie and everything to go their way or they throw their toys out the cot.

In hindsight NZRU did SARU a massive favor by kicking them out of Super Rugby, now they don’t have to live with their endless tantrums and arrogance. Just look how they treated Australia after that! Absolutely disgracefully telling the ARU that they could only have 2 teams in NZR’s new competition they were setting up. Shows that NZR has no intention of being partners with anybody, they just want money and as much as they can get.

Honestly, I think the best thing for ARU is to push forward and start their won competition.

I mentioned almost 2 years ago that Australia should ride the wave os SRA and start their own competition. The Aussies I know are fiercely tribal folks and that tribalism does not extend to New Zealand or foreign shores.

Makes perfect sense to do the gentlemanly thing and give NZR notice and then for the RA to take care of Australian rugby first and foremost.

One of Australia’s biggest failures over the past 25byeats is that there was no domestic competition similar to the Currie Cup. The Currie Cup is pure tribalism and an absolute gold mine.

Aussies need to take care of themselves because you have all seen how the NZR treat their so-called “partners”.

Rusty, as far as I know the two competitions are not linked at all so promotion/relegation is definitely not on the table. The URC format & teams is cast in concrete, besides the URC have stated that the only thing they are considering is an under 23 version of the current URC format & teams.

TE, they deliberately neglected the “sort of” aspect of Fourie’s claims and latched on to the URC aspect for sensationalism purposes only and completely miss the point.

As far as I am aware the competition, that is over two years long in the making, has nothing to do with the URC and all to do with teams from the Tier 2 Nations Georgia, Spain, Portugal, Kenya, Romania, Zim, Russia (maybe not Russia anymore …) & possibly even teams from Wales, Scotland and Italy. There were also rumors about the Jaguares based in Spain.

From what I have heard there is already financial backing for several of the teams and a PE on board who I think are called ‘Redstrike’ that the Cheetahs have been dealing with on this competition to get it up and running. SA Rugby has already has Zim, Kenya and Georgia playing in the Currie Cup 2nd division similarly to what was done with the Argentine Jaguares to improve their rugby.

Competition would be a replacement for the old Inter-Continental shield but will be renamed / rebranded and prize on offer would be entrance into the EPCR Challenge Cup. Last info I had was a possible start in October 2022.

Now it’s just a waiting game… 😊

JN, our Varsity Cup have 7 & 5 point try system. They started trials back to 2016 for 9 & 7 pointers and have settled on the 7 pointer for a try originating from a team’s own half.

I was at a Varsity Cup game recently where they scored a couple of 7 pointers. You get the clear impression that the guys are seriously targeting the 9 pointers and run it from their own half whenever they can. My impression is that the 7 point try concept is working great.

Oh my goodness, Wikipedia 😂 😂 😂

I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a rugby fan to not know what their nation’s future holds because they have been left behind in the race for lucrative commercial deals and completely in the dark while the global rugby industry consolidates commercial value in the North.

NH, the NZ’s will never accept the truth no matter what we say. They also choose to ignore the fact that SA could not just walk away from their contractual obligations to SANZAAR and join Celtic rugby.

Paulo, you are correct, NZR don’t (never did) have the power to kick another partner out. Nonetheless, this did not stop them from doing it.

I really don’t care if people live in denial or not but the truth is that when Covid-19 hit and competitions were suspended NZR took the opportunity to break away. NZR breached the newly signed broadcast contract (14-team Super Rugby & TRC for which five-years from 2021-2025) in late July 2020 when they unilaterally decided to create their own Super Rugby tournament from 2021, without consulting its partners in the joint venture. NZR took a massive gamble thinking that the broadcasters would not view their actions as a breach of contract but it backfired spectacularly. Especially so with Sky UK who pulled out of broadcasting all rugby and after almost 2 years have only signed back on this month.

Another fact folks overlook is that SA Rugby was bound to SANZAAR by the same contracts and could not just walk away and join the Pro14. NZR’s breach/tearing up the contract made it possible for SA Rugby to immediately restart negotiations for the Rainbow Cup competition.

And yes to the other question, NZR publicly announced that its future didn’t include South Africa.

About the “RA and NZR literally have the pot of gold now”, I can sort of agree with you on the RA part because of what I have read recently. The initial 2 years the RA signed up for SRP is coming to an end so it is also a waiting game to see if they decide to stay or go and do their own thing. However, I have absolutely no idea on the NZR and what plans / competitions Silver Lake has for them, if any. Nobody is talking about them in any context and all I have heard is that all the 6N, SA & ARG clubs & unions won’t go near Silver Lake with a barge pole. Maybe there is a reason for that stance?