SA Rocks

It’s been a relatively good weekend for South African sports.

Bafana Bafana played great football on Saturday but sadly lost to Spain 2-0. In spite of the final score I felt that the lads played one helluva game and improved their football tenfold from their first performance in the Confederations Cup.

Now, lets just hope that Bafana can hold a MASSIVE upset and defeat Brazil in the semi-final. Surprisingly Egypt did not make it through to the semi’s. I think after their historic victory over World Champions Italy, they deserved to pip the USA and go through. Alas it was not to be.

And the Bokke pulled off a lucky victory against the British and Irish Lions on Saturday. I say lucky because we technically received a thumping in the second half of the match. A great performance in the first half put us up by a fair amount. The Beast had a ripper of a game and destroyed the scrums for the Lions. When he was replaced. Things went bad.

I am impressed with Mr Peter de Villiers and his response. He took blame for making substitutions too early in the game. This most definitely put us in a tricky slot. We handled it well and luckily came away with a win.

Finally, yes in case you had forgotten, we still lost the T20 semi-final. Pakistan however, ended up winning the tournament. Congratulations to them!

Popularity: 16% [?]

They’ve done it again. This time the Boks have won World Team of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Saint Petersburg, Russia on Monday night.

I love it. It never stops with SA Rugby. OK, so it does stop, but only temporarily. It seems as though rugby has become a sport of unity for SA in recent years.

Some of the team members present at the awards and ready to take it on were International Rugby Board (IRB) Coach of the Year Jake White, accompanied by IRB Player of the Year Bryan Habana, former IRB Player of the Year Schalk Burger, the top points’ scorer at the World Cup Percy Montgomery, and fellow World Cup winners’ Butch James and Bakkies Botha.

I really think that this team will go down in sport as one of the greatest in any sport. I would’ve said this before the Laureus anyway but at least now I can say it with some semblance of reason.

It is a proud day when a South African team takes on the world at their sport and wins. It is also a proud day when a team is names Team of the Year in any discipline. The other nominees for the Laureus World Team of the Year Award were Italian football team AC Milan, the Australian Cricket Team, Ferrari, the German Women’s Football Team and the Iraqi Football Team. The Laureus World Sports Awards is the only global sports awards honouring the greatest sportsmen and women across all sports each year.

What a pleasure to have beaten out the Italians, Australians and Germans in one award. Just goes to show that if the competition is good, the winner needs to be great.

Popularity: 6% [?]

What do you think about this?

Should this be a race issue, is the team rejecting the man, is the media overplaying the race card?

Should the team have the power to attempt to reject Peter de Villiers? I don’t think so. I think they need to put up and play.

I also think I need to quickly say something about support and fanatacism in SA. Let’s put it this way. Peter de Villiers is screwed. The man has the toughest four years ahead of him. He can expect SA fans to hate him when we lose, love him when we win and use his race against him. We can expect some sort of media rumble about the Bok camp being in a mess.

And we can expect that the Springboks WILL NOT WIN the next World Cup. As fans we need to be realistic and factually accurate. No team has won it twice in a row, No coach has either so let us not put that much pressure on de Villiers. I think that a more reasonable goal is for our teams to perform well again in the Super 14 and to try and win the tri-Nations tournament. That is a realist goal in my opinion.

Popularity: 8% [?]

This is my prediction at least! I have no doubt in my mind that this will be the outcome.

I think that we have the determination to do it and the humble, focused attitude for the win to be possible. It might not happen, there is always, always that chance but so be it, that is sport. It is not the be all and end all if we don’t win. But we will!

An interesting discussion that I was part of the other day centred around what it would be like in Wimbledon, Putney, Essex and other areas in England that have a high SA population. I think that either way there is going to be upheaval in those areas. British pubs with losers (either way you look at it) inside pissed of and pissed in general

The combination of Saffas, Pommes, beer and win/loss outcome is potent and deadly. I sincerely hope for the sake of every Saffa over there that the Bokke destroy England on Saturday. If they don’t life is going to be considerably more uncomfortable at work, at pubs and at play for any South African living abroad.

All in all I think that the world cup this year was a success and the nation building that took place has been welcome.

Congratulations to the Bokke and England for making it to the final. May the best team win!

Tracey McGregor agrees with me… keep your eyes up lads, listen to the audio.

Popularity: 3% [?]