Spears must show they are worthy

Southern Spears chief executive Tony McKeever has reacted to the announcement that there will be an investigation into his franchise's readiness to play Super 14 in 2007 by punting for the inception of a series of promotion/relegation matches to determine which South African teams compete each year.

There should be no quibble with McKeever on that. Like in British football, the battle to avoid promotion/relegation at the end of the season does provide a sub-plot to the competition which makes it more interesting. The prospect that relegation might still happen may also force a team like the Stormers to stay honest right to the end of the season rather than implode as they have in previous Super seasons when their chances of semi-final participation have been erased. Where I would differ from McKeever, however, is with his suggestion that the promotion/relegation matches should only start after the 2007 season, and that the Spears should play in 2007 and then only be exposed to promotion/relegation fixtures after that.

The promotion/relegation fixtures, which he envisages being played over a home, away and one on neutral territory format, should be staged to offer the Spears a chance to play themselves into the competition, to stake their claim and prove themselves.

It makes no sense to include the Spears in the competition BEFORE they have proved themselves as a team, and then make them defend their status once they are there. It should be the other way around, as it is in every other major competition in the world where teams are relegated at the end of a season: the team that comes in has to have done so on the basis that they are worthy.

This would also suffer the SANZAR requirement that the best teams and players from each country participate in the competitions.

And there is no way to prove that the Spears are worthy, and that they provide a team and players better than those they would displace from the competition, other than in matches between them and the bottom placed South African team.

Promoting the Spears straight into the Super 14 without a promotion/relegation game is not realistic at the moment simply because they were comprehensively outplayed by all the existing Super 14 franchises that they played against in pre-season friendlies this year.

For instance, the Stormers, one of the teams languishing near the bottom of the South African contingent in the Super 14 at present, put over 70 points past them - and this in a game which was their first of the season while the Spears had already played four!

The Spears will counter that by saying that the playing fields are not level at the moment as next year they will be getting players drafted from the franchise that drops out etc.

Which of course poses the question: If this is the policy, how does the Spears' participation in the Super 14 serve the purpose of offering opportunities to the talent in the Southern and Eastern Cape? Remember that this was one of the tenets of the Spears' presentation at the big Bid day that I sat through at Newlands last year, when all the interested parties were invited to submit their Bids.

Even in their present incarnation, the Spears are not exactly made up of players initially from the Eastern Cape. I am told the team that played against the Cheetahs in their first big warm-up game included only two players who had been schooled in that region.

If the Spears are to participate in next year's Super 14 with players drafted or loaned from the franchise that drops out of the competition at the end of this season, it also begs an interesting question about who these loaned players will play for when the union that employs them gets to face the Spears in the promotion/relegation games at the end of 2007?

This is another reason that a promotion/relegation game, or series of games, must take place before 2007. I don't know how the Spears are going to secure players capable of living in the big league, but the way for them to make it into the Super 14 is to play their way in. That is how it should be in professional sport, and offering them an opportunity to do so is fair.

We keep hearing that it would be unfair to the Spears to exclude them now, but entrenching them in the competition now without them having proved that they are a competent unit and a viable concern is patently unfair on the team that they would replace.