I feel robbed.

The Super 14 Group stages, along with the fleeting hanging ons of summer, came to an end this weekend. After picking the Waratahs to whip the Lions at Coca cola park on Friday night, the men in red actually came to play. Now im not objective when it comes to the Lions but i seriously feel that under another ref the game may have ended poorly for the touring side. Anyways, im leaving that one alone.

The main agenda of regular South African pub banter was focused on the injustices and inconsistencies surrounding the discaplinary hearings and citings of malicious and dangerous play. Actually, the only consistency shown has been that South African players recieve different, more harsh punishments for their indescretions. And now that we have made enough noise about it for the International Rugby community to listen, Bakkies Botha flat hands Kankowski- reminding the world why they are unsympathetic when it comes to Springbok whinging.

Over and above that, i just cant wait to see how the lock and 8th man combine when they share the green and gold. On the green n gold, some people think Earl Rose deserves a shot. I think those people should be shot, or at least they should be banned from watching the game or speaking about it. He is the only player who ever had the prestige of having an editing team make a montage of his mistakes in a single game, during the game. It was worth about 45 seconds of fumbles, missed tackles, wild passing and kicking out on the full. If "Loffie" hadn't put him on the wing and my girlfriend hadn't made half the Highlanders backline drunk the night before at a popular Joburg night spot, the lions could have lost that one too.

And would you believe it, people are backing Watson again. He is good, but good amongst 6 phenomenal players in the same slot, leaves him looking less likely to be selected in my eyes. But hey, the way things have been going Earl and Puke might be in, im just really glad that at the end of the day Clever is American, they might have found some reason to include him ahead of Smith at number 7.