The whingeing Aussie has some nerve

Wallaby rugby coach Eddie Jones has quite a nerve to accuse his Springbok counterpart Rudolf Straeuli of being a whiner.

If ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this is it. For if a vox-pop was held among rugby journalists to establish who would be the World Rugby Whinge Champion, I have little doubt that Jones would walk away with the title without having to so much as raise a sweat.

In his time as coach of the ACT Brumbies, Jones was heard to moan every time his team hit a false note (which, of course, they very rarely did). When members of his team bashed a taxi in Cape Town in 2000, it somehow became not the fault of his players, but the people and the journalists of the host city.

When they lost in Durban to the Sharks in 2001, it was not the way the Sharks played that beat them, but the way the new laws were configured.

Later in the season it was the fault of the referees, who were not understanding those laws correctly. South Africa, he said, were doing better in the Super 12 because the new game encouraged players and teams that lacked skill.

Every time he has been approached to comment on a South African issue, he has not been shy to have his say. Frequently he puts the boot in.

So how can he turn around now and slam Straeuli for "making statements about every Australian rugby issue"?

Is that not what the Aussies have been doing to South African rugby for several years? Straeuli's call for a complete dope test for the entire Australian team following the Ben Tune debacle may sound a little over the top, but it is understandable if you consider that the Aussies have been shown to be drug cheats.

And that is the only term that can be used for an organisation that deliberately hid the positive test on Tune from public view. If it happened in Tune's case, how is Straeuli to know that the problem might not be a whole lot more prevalent.

Yes, Straeuli was naughty to suggest the whole IRB procedure should be changed in this instance.

But then why worry about it if you have nothing to hide. The dope testing is not a drawn out process for the players.

It is a simple procedure that does not take much time at all. I say submit the players to a full test so that the name of Aussie rugby can be cleared, which it needs to be in this instance (just read some of the Aussie media vitriol on the issue if you don't believe me).

South African rugby, after the problems that the country encountered when first back from isolation, has followed the IRB doping procedures down to the letter.

Johan Ackermann was banned for two years after testing positive, so were several other players. Had they been let off just before a test or series against the Aussies, I am sure the Wallabies would have bleated like lost sheep.

The Cobus Visagie case, where the player was allowed to wriggle free from the noose, was not the fault of SA Rugby. That case went to the courts, where Visagie was let off on a technicality.

SA Rugby, who did nothing to support Visagie during the trial and even appeared to oppose his attempts to get back into the game, had no choice then but to consider him for selection.

The fact is that Tune, when he tested positive, should have had the book thrown at him.

The Aussies knew about the test but covered it up. Shame on them.

Jones is lucky that the whole issue appears to be blowing over. How rich of him then to turn on Straeuli, who is only voicing what many are thinking and who is probably, like he has done several times before himself, only answering the questions posed by journalists.

There again, we ought to have come to expect that the Aussies would respond to a whinge with a whinge of their own. Remember how the NSW Waratahs in 1994 refused to play a Super 10 game in Durban because they thought it was too dangerous.

That was okay, but then they turned around and claimed that they should be given the points for the match. A few years later they did something similar when they refused to play a World Cup cricket match in Sri Lanka.

As for the hypocrisy which the Aussies are becoming famous for, let's look no further than those two great cricketing heroes, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh.

The book-maker incident of the early 1990s may have been every bit as serious as that which turned the late Hansie Cronje into a villain (the Aussies had a field day on that one). When did we hear about it? Five years after the event.