2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA
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@majorrage said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
.... I think it was Major Rage, I get lost with the street signs indicating who is responding to who, said:"complete and utter horse shit" and I say he has pronounced that accurately.
I have read the accounts here with interest, against the backdrop of some years of history, watching, for example, during my professional cadetship from the upper floors of the South African Airways Building in Elizabeth Street, Sydney as the '71 tour protestors strutted their stuff.
The very best bit is yet another invented condition used to bludgeon disagreement with the cause:
"But by doing so they elided the actual point: it isn’t intentional disrespect that’s the problem but rather the unexamined unintentional disrespect and prejudice that needed to be acknowledged"
Whoever came up with that has an assured future in Hollywood, where they make up phrases and sentences, which have no foundation and which mean precisely nothing, on the trot!
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@smuts said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@stodders I was thinking about persecution complexes/lived experiences.
But the TLDR is: Rassie was a fluffybunny. He should apologize immediately to Berry and to Rugby. And SARU comes out of this horribly.
But from s’Africans’ perspective the video didn’t get the boks an advantage. It finally got this team close to parity in treatment from the refs.
What is frustrating for us is that this team isn’t a creature of a single South African cultural group, much less an expression or extension of the Afrikaaner volk. That was part of what Rassie was protesting. His, and apparently the team’s view, was that they were being treated by the refs as something they weren’t: the Afrikaans bullies of apartheid-era myth. For a team that very consciously defined itself as being the first truly representative bok team that must’ve grated.
But I think the far bigger thing was the team’s perception that Siya was shown far less respect than Jones.
So, the relevant cultural perspective is from the Cape Flats as well as the wineries of Stellenbosch, from Bisho in the Eastern Cape through the leafy Sandton suburbs reeking of too much white wine and white guilt to the townships of NKyamazane.
But Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, coloured and Afrikaaner share a history of being treated with thinly disguised patronizing contempt by the English. And try as we might, we’d never quite master the subtle social rules and etiquette to be treated as truly civilized.
I’m very sure Berry didn’t intentionally disrespect Kolisi. But I’m equally sure that Kolisi and his team were not accorded the same respect as Jones and the Lions. Kolisi damn sure was: he testified to it.
Rassie’s video was too long, the tone was shit and, having read the judgment, his behaviour leading up to its publication and afterwards was bullying and cowardly, frankly: inexcusable.
But it was also necessary. There is no question after it of any ref dismissing Kolisi, they came correct. And I don’t see any official channel that could have been used to achieve that result.
And here’s the thing: the panel rightly went out of its way to foreground the cost of all this on Berry.
I think that to try and remedy it an extent, they underlined that they accepted his evidence that he did not intentionally disrespect Kolisi. But by doing so they elided the actual point: it isn’t intentional disrespect that’s the problem but rather the unexamined unintentional disrespect and prejudice that needed to be acknowledged.
TL;DR second paragraph good point. Rest complete and utter horse shit.
@majorrage said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
TL;DR second paragraph good point. Rest complete and utter horse shit.
Good Nigel Owens impersonation there. Major.
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@billy-webb said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
Gosh - some thread this has been since the verdict against Rassie!
I'm not going to bother to go into any detail about the video or the WR verdict but will simply state 3 views I hold:
- Nic Berry's performance in the first BIL's test was
shitlet's say well below par with a vast majority of those poor decisions going against SA. - The standard of refereeing in tests 2 & 3 were markedly better
- Rassie has been and continues to be great for the Boks and SA rugby.
Discuss with vigour...
I think you are being a little too subtle with your trolling here
Anyhow - point one speaks to one of the main reasons I can't support what he did. Refs make mistakes and those mistakes can (and in my opinion did) influence the outcome of games. But so what, what is the point of litigating those mistakes after the fact?
When I squint through green glasses glasses I can see some issues that was worth discussing though.
1- the refs not holding to their pre-game briefing notes (engaging early on a lineout maul and disrupting caterpillar rucks). When I ref tells you that he is going to focus on these issues, you react and the other team doesn't it is annoying. It is something that can be remedied in future games.
2- related to the above is the issue of "respecting the captains equally". In the warm up matches the Lions used their experience to influence the referees and it worked. In the SA A game the chatter was insane and they had pump in crowd noise for the rest of the tour. It appears that this was brought up in the prematch briefing and the Boks felt it was not acted upon.
3 - the refs not keeping to their stated focus areas (rolling away, foul play etc).
Rassie's video was not structured around or fucused enough on the things that should be rectified in the following tests. Instead it just became a wall of noise.
One thing I would say though - I feel people are overstating how a) insulting/abusive the video was and b) how much of the criticism was aimed directly at Berry rather than the group as a whole.
@sidbarret said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@billy-webb said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
Gosh - some thread this has been since the verdict against Rassie!
I'm not going to bother to go into any detail about the video or the WR verdict but will simply state 3 views I hold:
- Nic Berry's performance in the first BIL's test was
shitlet's say well below par with a vast majority of those poor decisions going against SA. - The standard of refereeing in tests 2 & 3 were markedly better
- Rassie has been and continues to be great for the Boks and SA rugby.
Discuss with vigour...
I think you are being a little too subtle with your trolling here
Hahaha. Not a trolling attempt. Although I have appreciated all the responses and their views expressed.
I have simply removed / attempted to remove the “Rassie did right / did wrong/ should’ve/ should not have “ element from my view of the events and tried to distill it into a few facts …. As I see them
I don’t mind if people don’t agree.
- Nic Berry's performance in the first BIL's test was
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@sidbarret said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@billy-webb said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
Gosh - some thread this has been since the verdict against Rassie!
I'm not going to bother to go into any detail about the video or the WR verdict but will simply state 3 views I hold:
- Nic Berry's performance in the first BIL's test was
shitlet's say well below par with a vast majority of those poor decisions going against SA. - The standard of refereeing in tests 2 & 3 were markedly better
- Rassie has been and continues to be great for the Boks and SA rugby.
Discuss with vigour...
I think you are being a little too subtle with your trolling here
Hahaha. Not a trolling attempt. Although I have appreciated all the responses and their views expressed.
I have simply removed / attempted to remove the “Rassie did right / did wrong/ should’ve/ should not have “ element from my view of the events and tried to distill it into a few facts …. As I see themI don’t mind if people don’t agree.
@billy-webb sorry mate, can't agree with your points then.
1 - yeah so, last time I checked the final whistle went and we had less points than the lions. It doesn't matter now what we're mistakes were made and not made. I believe but for those mistakes we would have won, but nothing done afterwards is going to change that.
2 - we won games two and three but the reffing wasn't great, did we benefit from the refereeing, I don't know*. Was it influenced by Rassie's video - I hope not as it only enforces the bullshit that was coming from both sides.
- Anyone complaining about calls going SA way in game 2 and 3 can watch the first tackle of game two and then fuck right off.
3 - short term maybe - but in his current role we need to evaluate his performance in 5 years time and not just the Boks but all elite rugby in the country, and I am not sure I agree with a couple his calls in that regard.
Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually.
- Nic Berry's performance in the first BIL's test was
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@billy-webb sorry mate, can't agree with your points then.
1 - yeah so, last time I checked the final whistle went and we had less points than the lions. It doesn't matter now what we're mistakes were made and not made. I believe but for those mistakes we would have won, but nothing done afterwards is going to change that.
2 - we won games two and three but the reffing wasn't great, did we benefit from the refereeing, I don't know*. Was it influenced by Rassie's video - I hope not as it only enforces the bullshit that was coming from both sides.
- Anyone complaining about calls going SA way in game 2 and 3 can watch the first tackle of game two and then fuck right off.
3 - short term maybe - but in his current role we need to evaluate his performance in 5 years time and not just the Boks but all elite rugby in the country, and I am not sure I agree with a couple his calls in that regard.
Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually.
@sidbarret said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@billy-webb sorry mate, can't agree with your points then.
1 - yeah so, last time I checked the final whistle went and we had less points than the lions. It doesn't matter now what we're mistakes were made and not made. I believe but for those mistakes we would have won, but nothing done afterwards is going to change that.
2 - we won games two and three but the reffing wasn't great, did we benefit from the refereeing, I don't know*. Was it influenced by Rassie's video - I hope not as it only enforces the bullshit that was coming from both sides.
- Anyone complaining about calls going SA way in game 2 and 3 can watch the first tackle of game two and then fuck right off.
3 - short term maybe - but in his current role we need to evaluate his performance in 5 years time and not just the Boks but all elite rugby in the country, and I am not sure I agree with a couple his calls in that regard.
Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually.
"Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually."
Care to elaborate a bit on this Sid?
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@mick-gold-coast-qld shoehorning a yarn about how you once watched from afar as other people protested Apartheid as your framing for thinking about this situation is next level fishing.
I salute you.
@smuts said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@mick-gold-coast-qld shoehorning a yarn about how you once watched from afar as other people protested Apartheid as your framing for thinking about this situation is next level fishing.
I salute you.
Your obfuscation leaves me quite bewildered.
I reflect briefly on what my eyes have seen over time, state that I have found the various opinions offered here (politely, I am pleased to say) interesting; and mock the dialect employed by internet posters on a mission, any mission - which was my primary reason for posting in the first place.
You craft fiction "shoehorning a yarn ... once watched from afar as other people protested ... your framing for thinking" ... eh?; and "fishing" - for what?
I am happy to argue the toss about all manner of things with my mates over a lazy beer, a known and credible environment. Internet forums do not offer that.
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@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
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@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
@mick-gold-coast-qld said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
Not quite comparable. No traveling fans allowed. No crowds.
Normally, it is actually very festive off the field. -
@mick-gold-coast-qld said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
Not quite comparable. No traveling fans allowed. No crowds.
Normally, it is actually very festive off the field.@billy-webb said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@mick-gold-coast-qld said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
Not quite comparable. No traveling fans allowed. No crowds.
Normally, it is actually very festive off the field.Yeah that honestly looked like shit on TV. Having attended a few Lions games now it needs the crowd.
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@mick-gold-coast-qld said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
What a good observation! We have tours over here where the supporters wait and queue and miss the rent so that they can pay for tickets, in delight and keen anticipation of the contest. It is "good natured" from start to finish.
Last time they were here in 2013 the British and Irish Lions played from one side of the country to the other - nine games against just about anyone who could scrape together a team - and the mob loved it. We got to see George Smith again - a real player 'n all. They won almost all of them, but the mob loved it still!
You'd reckon the South Africans would be pleased to welcome anyone who bothered to pay them a visit!
Not quite comparable. No traveling fans allowed. No crowds.
Normally, it is actually very festive off the field.@billy-webb @Derpus @Mick-Gold-Coast-QLD
From all I’ve heard from travelling Lions supporters the general welcome around the country and at the games is fantastic, be it SA, Aus or NZ. Virtually without exception. The media starts off viewing things in a very welcoming manner before rubbishing the squad selection and coaching team and the descends into ever deeper levels of vitriol. Again this is pretty much the same for each country . This seemed to have its birth in the ‘89 tour to Aus. The unfriendly side of the rival coaching teams has increased more or less year on year since 2005 and I think Woodward’s approach had a lot to do with this. Gatland has been upping the ante since. McGeechan the only outlier. Rassie has just taken things nuclear.
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@billy-webb @Derpus @Mick-Gold-Coast-QLD
From all I’ve heard from travelling Lions supporters the general welcome around the country and at the games is fantastic, be it SA, Aus or NZ. Virtually without exception. The media starts off viewing things in a very welcoming manner before rubbishing the squad selection and coaching team and the descends into ever deeper levels of vitriol. Again this is pretty much the same for each country . This seemed to have its birth in the ‘89 tour to Aus. The unfriendly side of the rival coaching teams has increased more or less year on year since 2005 and I think Woodward’s approach had a lot to do with this. Gatland has been upping the ante since. McGeechan the only outlier. Rassie has just taken things nuclear.
@catogrande
Excellent post. Spot on in all regards. -
@derpus said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
What's with the Lions tours becoming so bad natured? Or has it always been this way.
Weirdly, it seems to be related to the success of the BIL teams and vice-versa. The more successful the team is, the more popular - '71 Lions, 2013, 1993 and to a lesser extent 2017. Crap teams like Woodwhinge's are at the other end of the likeability scale
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@billy-webb @Derpus @Mick-Gold-Coast-QLD
From all I’ve heard from travelling Lions supporters the general welcome around the country and at the games is fantastic, be it SA, Aus or NZ. Virtually without exception. The media starts off viewing things in a very welcoming manner before rubbishing the squad selection and coaching team and the descends into ever deeper levels of vitriol. Again this is pretty much the same for each country . This seemed to have its birth in the ‘89 tour to Aus. The unfriendly side of the rival coaching teams has increased more or less year on year since 2005 and I think Woodward’s approach had a lot to do with this. Gatland has been upping the ante since. McGeechan the only outlier. Rassie has just taken things nuclear.
@catogrande said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
McGeechan the only outlier
Great guy and one of my top 5 coaches. Love the (poss. apocryphal) story about the '05 Lions management being booed as they walked into a hotel - except McGeechan who got a big round of applause.
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@sidbarret said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@billy-webb sorry mate, can't agree with your points then.
1 - yeah so, last time I checked the final whistle went and we had less points than the lions. It doesn't matter now what we're mistakes were made and not made. I believe but for those mistakes we would have won, but nothing done afterwards is going to change that.
2 - we won games two and three but the reffing wasn't great, did we benefit from the refereeing, I don't know*. Was it influenced by Rassie's video - I hope not as it only enforces the bullshit that was coming from both sides.
- Anyone complaining about calls going SA way in game 2 and 3 can watch the first tackle of game two and then fuck right off.
3 - short term maybe - but in his current role we need to evaluate his performance in 5 years time and not just the Boks but all elite rugby in the country, and I am not sure I agree with a couple his calls in that regard.
Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually.
"Also, there are some legitimate complaints about the vibe around Springbok team. They are overblown and hystrionic but there are little bits of truth to them. If they don't fix it or become super dominant it is going to catch up with the team eventually."
Care to elaborate a bit on this Sid?
@stodders the two things that stick out are the stoppages and that incident where the s&c coach got told off in NZ2.
Townsend had a bit of wingh this week about his players being sledged from the sidelines by the SA support staff (though I think he missed the actual sledge - the comments were in Afrikaans and half his team understood what was said - call it a meta sledge).
It's all very class stuff.
If you win it's fine (see Aussie cricket circa 2003) but if lose or are just average you soon become Aussie cricket in 2018.
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@stodders the two things that stick out are the stoppages and that incident where the s&c coach got told off in NZ2.
Townsend had a bit of wingh this week about his players being sledged from the sidelines by the SA support staff (though I think he missed the actual sledge - the comments were in Afrikaans and half his team understood what was said - call it a meta sledge).
It's all very class stuff.
If you win it's fine (see Aussie cricket circa 2003) but if lose or are just average you soon become Aussie cricket in 2018.
@sidbarret said in 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to SA:
@stodders the two things that stick out are the stoppages and that incident where the s&c coach got told off in NZ2.
Townsend had a bit of wingh this week about his players being sledged from the sidelines by the SA support staff (though I think he missed the actual sledge - the comments were in Afrikaans and half his team understood what was said - call it a meta sledge).
It's all very class stuff.
If you win it's fine (see Aussie cricket circa 2003) but if lose or are just average you soon become Aussie cricket in 2018.
See Haddin ODI CWC Final 2015... to quote: we won didn't we?
