Justice my other foot!

To say that I am pissed off about the IRB’s decision to find the Springboks and SA Rugby guilty of bringing the game into disrepute is only because I can’t come up with a stronger expression.

The IRB’s so-called Independent Committee, chaired by Sir John Hansen of New Zealand with Judge Guillermo Tragant of Argentina and former Wallaby captain John Eales, has played it by the book and in the process let down one of rugby’s great figures, John Smit, and the game itself.

In the course of a “judgment” running to some 35 pages the trio have left SA Rugby with little room to manoeuvre with dire threats of how the penalties could have been greater and how South Africa’s world champions were at risk of being banned (although a subsequent passage revealed that such a sanction would have been suspended) from the next World Cup tournament.

The committee “expressly found that on the merits of the case the actions of SARU, its players and team management brought the game into disrepute, criticised the judicial process and was (therefore) misconduct. “The committee separately noted such misconduct to be serious in nature and commented that ‘there has been no formal apology, acknowledgement, contrition or clarification from either the players or the SARU themselves.’

“The independent committee made it very clear in its ruling that the playing arena is no place for protest and that the wearing of the armbands showed a serious lack of respect and consideration for their opponents. It was clear that if players choose to wear on their uniforms armbands or other emblems which bring the game into disrepute, then they have breached that Regulation [11].

“The committee criticised SARU because they allowed the game and the IRB to be brought into disrepute by not only failing to attempt to prevent this protest, but by approving of it and effectively consenting to conduct which was prejudicial to the best interests of the IRB and of the game.”

The Hansen committee has thus chosen to look at the armband incident in isolation and not delve into the reasons for it occurring.

It is a classic case of treating the symptom and not the cause because Messrs Hansen, Tragant and Eales elected, copping out in my opinion, to ignore the reason for the Springboks resorting to their protest.

In so doing they failed to heed a heartfelt message from the world’s most-capped captain and one of the most-capped and most-decorated squads of players in history.

The Springboks are not some two-bit little outfit from the backwoods. They are the current world champions and are No 1 on the IRB’s ranking list. For them (and the union they represent) to decide to show dissent in a way they probably knew would lead to tumult in the oval world’s corridors of power in Dublin surely deserved greater consideration.

The amount of capital letters the IRB affords itself and its functionaries in all its communiqués is revealing of the kind of stuck-up organisation it is and it is guilty of shooting the messenger, in this case SA Rugby and the Springboks, rather than paying heed to a Problem that is Seriously bringing The Game into Disrepute.

The IRB’s disciplinary process is a mess that delivers inconsistent and flawed outcomes almost on a weekly basis. Not only is the judicial system out of step with the ethos of the game it purports to protect and represent but it does not enjoy the support and confidence of the players and the public at large.

The Springboks deciding to make a stand on Bakkies Botha being suspended for an action that takes place numerous times in almost any senior game played around the world was not some knee-jerk by the squad but the result of frustration at inequities visited on them over many seasons.

To even link John Smit’s name to the phrase “bringing the game into disrepute” is an insult that cannot be allowed to stand.

The Springbok captain has suffered severely and unfairly at the hands of officialdom – Paul Honiss telling him to have a chat to his players at Lansdowne Road and allowing Ronan O’Gara to score a try while the Boks’ backs were turned; being unjustly severely punished with a six-week ban when, while in possession of the ball, his hand-off made contact with French captain Jerome Thion’s throat at the Stade de France; Brad Thorn up-ending him in a spear tackle in which he was injured at Eden Park and then receiving a suspension of only one week and the punishment meted out to Bakkies Botha for a rugby action while Andrew Sheridan escaped any censure whatsoever for aiming punches at Andries Bekker’s testicles.

There have been many other incidents in the course of Smit’s long career in which the scales of justice have been weighted against his team or one or another of his teammates.

Given wiser council the Springboks might have decided not to wear the armbands but the steps taken and the language used by the IRB is a raging disgrace. How disappointing that the much respected John Eales, who in my estimation was the kind of captain John Smit is, has lent his name to such calumny.

The great pity is that Louis Luyt is not still the president of SARU because boy would they have had a fight on their hands!