SA rugby is like vomit on the Mona Lisa
rugby365‘s decorated and respected writer Paul Dobson tells us exactly how ugly an animal South African rugby has become, despite the glory of winning a second World Cup!
Somebody vomited on the Mona Lisa. Imagine that for ugliness.
Disfigurement is ugly. The greater the beauty, the uglier the disfigurement.
When an Australian geologist took a hammer and disfigured Michelangelo’s Pieta in St Peter’s, the world shuddered with horror.
Do you remember the days when you put a record on the record player and sat back to listen to Mantovani and the needle stuck in a groove? It was so ugly. The contrast between the Mantovani’s easy strings and the ugly sound of a stuck record made the grating ugliness so much worse.
And so the Jake White business is all the uglier because it disfigured that which was glorious and beautiful. The World Cup was won, the players behaved with composure and maturity, and the nation burst with pride and joy.
An interviewer put a mike in front of a black man and asked him his hero, and he said: “John Smit.” The interviewer put the mike in front of a blonde girl and asked her her hero, and she said: “Bryan Habana.” Race had vanished in joy and there was the prospect of a new and bright dawn. South Africans were South Africans and united. It was 1995 revisited with even greater prospects.
Then came the matter of the coach and all the recriminations, the accusations and counteraccusations, the tawdry “revelations”. The generosity of the victory and the reaction to the victory was scarred with self-serving. It has been disgusting and so demoralising. It is so demoralising that that which has been crafted with so much skill and effort can be destroyed in one foul act.
In the light of the damage that has been done, it does not matter who is to blame. What has happened is ugly, a disfigurement of a nation. It is the stuck needle, the vomit on the face of the Mona Lisa, the hammer on the Pieta.
Nobody is talking about the World Cup any more. Nobody seems interested. In fact people are shying away from it as if it was merely a spent dream. It may as well have happened years and years ago. Instead the talk is of Jake White, Oregan Hoskins, the Stofiles, the Watsons – a long way from the heroism on the fields of France.
Does it matter if White was right? Does it matter if White was wrong? Does it matter if White was indulging in a public relations exercise to add to the wealth rugby has already brought him?
Does it matter if Hoskins and his people treated White badly, undermining him? Does it matter if Hoskins and his people acted with unseemly haste to rid themselves of White and unseemly haste to appoint a new coach, leaving White, living dead, to take his team abroad?
What matters is the harm done. Dedicated men with painstaking skill could make the Pieta better, Mantovani can play on far finer equipment, the face of Mona Lisa can be washed. But what genius can restore South Africa to the shortlived happiness and hope that came with the World Cup?
Damn those who disfigured our country. Tie millstones round their necks and cast them into the depths of the Atlantic. What they have done is criminal lunacy.
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