IRB turned this one into a farce

The stop-start match between the Springboks and Pumas in Argentina was a farcical way to end what has otherwise been an enjoyable and encouraging year for the South African national team.

It was farcical not for the way the game went. Scoring over 30 points in the first half and then just three in the second does suggest a high element of slapstick, but what was really ridiculous was the odd taste the match left in the mouth afterwards.

Even when the Springboks were running all over the Pumas in the first half you couldn’t help balancing out the satisfaction of seeing the South Africans scoring so many tries with questions about the strength of the opposition.

The quality of the tackling was woeful, the organisation in the Argentina side was almost non-existent. I had said in my preview that it would be a close game on the basis that there has not been much separating the Boks and Pumas in recent years, but what I reckoned without was just how badly affected the hosts were by the 10 withdrawals that were forced on them.

The Boks, thanks as much to some fortuitous charge-downs and the non-existent Argentina defence, had the game wrapped up before the half hour mark. After a long year, where they had achieved so much, it was completely understandable that in the second half they just never engaged a decent gear in what commentators described as stifling, hot conditions.

And boy, was that second half miserable. With the game being played at 10pm South African time, it was hard to stay awake. Afterwards my reaction was similar to the one I often had during the last days of the reign of Rudolf Straeuli as Springbok coach: “What the dickens was that?!!”

My gripe is not with the Boks, but with the International Rugby Board, who allowed what should have been a big occasion to develop into something which no-one in the end really appeared to want.

I have tried to establish without luck just why the Boks ended this tour off with a trip to Argentina, which in terms of conditions is about as opposite as you can get from the venue of their previous match just seven days earlier against Scotland.

Back in June, when the match was announced, it was because the Boks needed to fulfil an IRB requirement. They had not been to Argentina in a while, and they needed to go there to help the sport in that country.

Everyone seems confused about it now, but a few months ago there was no doubt that the match had been sanctioned by the IRB. So you have to ask the question: How did that organisation allow the French clubs to get away with ruining the game by withdrawing the heart and soul of what until now had been a top performing Pumas team?

Jake White may be thanking his lucky stars, but imagine what a spectacle and occasion we may have had if the Pumas had fielded the same team that beat France in Marseilles recently and which just a week or so ago was only beaten in the last minutes by Ireland in Dublin.

It would have been a match worth travelling to. Which presumably is what the large number of Bok fans in the crowd must have thought when they paid their money for air fares and hotel accommodation.

Fortunately I sensed something was going to force this game pear-shaped quite a while ago, which was why I never made any plans to proceed from Britain to Argentina. I sensed there would not be that much interest in the game and thus it did not make business sense to go to Buenos Aires (admittedly the thought of those thick juicy steaks did nearly tempt me otherwise).

But those who did make arrangements in good faith that it would be a proper international match between two teams of approximate full-strength were sold short, and they should be as angry at the IRB as the Argentinians are for the way they get treated like poorer cousins.

That latter point, made by Argentinian officials and players through the media last week, does demand close scrutiny. The Pumas have shown over the past few years that they have the capability to develop into a major rugby power. Anyone who has been to Argentina will know the fans there are among the most vocal and enthusiastic in the world.

Yet of the top nine countries playing rugby, they remain the odd-man out in the sense that they are not part of any recognised international competition (Six Nations plus Tri-Nations makes nine).

Either the IRB are serious about developing the game outside of the traditional countries, or they are not. They must make up their minds.

I understand that this game was scheduled outside the so-called international window, but how would the IRB have reacted were it England in the run-up to a top match at Twickenham who had suddenly been robbed of its players? My guess is that it is not just disgruntled Argentinians who know the answer to that question.

Of course we do. The IRB, because of how that organisation is made up, will always accord huge importance to that which is demanded by the gentry of Richmond and Twickenham. Places like Argentina are nothing more than nuisance value because they are not part of the affluent club we should call The Big Boys.

During the Ben Tune doping incident of a few years back the IRB proved itself to be a toothless organisation that is incapable of really enforcing anything. In the past few weeks they have proved again that in rugby union very little really changes. It seems they remain useless.