Global game requires Puma inclusion

Buenos Aires is a much changed city compared to when the Springboks first started touring this country back in the 1990s, and the experience is quite different now for South Africans than it was then.

The latter is true partly because of the dramatic change in the exchange rate in the past few years. There was a time when my Argentine friends came to Cape Town because it was one of the cheapest places in the world to travel, but the decline of the peso and the strengthening of the rand now has the opposite effect.

Unfortunately, it probably has an effect on rugby administrators too, for I imagine this can be the only reason why this country, in the rugby sense anyway, is like a ship cut from its mooring and left to drift on the sea with a crew ordered to fend for itself with very little outside help.

Despite the economic collapse of 2001/2002, this remains a vibrant country with a vibrant population. Soccer remains the main sport here, and there were suggestions our plane spent 20 minutes parked on the tarmac at Buenos Aires Airport last Sunday waiting for a bay for no better reason than that the workers wanted to watch the final minutes of a club match on television.

But rugby is also big here, and while I haven´t done the sums or read up on the statistics, there must be many more rugby players in Argentina than there are in many other established International Rugby Board countries.

One of the talking points in Buenos Aires on an otherwise relatively quiet Sunday was the dramatic club final that was played between two fierce rival the day before.

The matches here are well attended, and while this column was written before Saturday´s big test match, I have yet to watch an international in Argentina (this is my third visit) in anything other than a relatively full house.

The cacophonous din that greeted the Boks last time I watched them play the Pumas here, at River Plate Stadium in 2001, was something else.

Argentina is also a competitive rugby nation, and is becoming more so now that their players are getting so much exposure to the French and British club leagues.

The draw with the British and Irish Lions in Cardiff a few months back should only really have been a shock to those who have not been paying attention to the growth of the game here.

And yet, as Springbok coach Jake White has pointed out, the Pumas somehow feel isolated on the world rugby stage. Part of the problem is of course geography, or at least that is what we get told when we ask why Argentina don´t figure more on the world rugby schedule.

There is no other top rugby nation nearby, which means that unlike Italy, who were easily absorbed into the Six Nations, the Pumas would pose logistic problems for the IRB and tournament organisers were they to be included in one of the two big international competitions.

However it is a nine and a half hour flight from Cape Town to Buenos Aires (seven and a half with the wind on the way home), which makes me wonder whether geography is really a valid argument against the Puma exclusion from the Tri-Nations tournament. After all, Perth is that far away from Johannesburg when you fly with the wind, and quite a bit further when you fly home against it.

And this is of course forgetting that it is not like the Boks play all their tests in Perth anyway. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are considerably further away from South Africa, and New Zealand is another story altogether.

Cape Town/Buenos Aires is an uncomplicated flight which is shorter than the one to Europe, so what is the problem?

The bottom line appears to be that the Pumas just don´t attract money like the traditional rivals do, and these days it seems that money is what counts in international rugby.

But then we keep hearing from the IRB that they want to globalise the game, which is one of the reasons that Japan features so strongly in the speculation on the venue of World Cup 2011.

If they really do want to globalise, then the IRB should be doing something to ensure that the strongest South American rugby nation is part of the mainstream. That means it has to be part of one of the two big tournaments to which all the other nations in the top nine currently belong.

Italy made great strides since joining the Six Nations.

But I would put my money on Argentina hammering the Italians every time they meet, so imagine what could be done in terms of ending the lack of competitiveness which mars every World Cup if the Pumas were allowed to grow and flourish.