KEY POINTS:
Only South Africa could produce the Luke Watson selection saga, sadly detracting from their first Super 14 triumph.
This at a time when the country's rugby stocks are riding high, with their top players exhibiting a level of skill and organisation previously unseen. New Zealand and the controversial reconditioning programme have played a part in this rise of South African rugby, unconsciously equipping our most fervent rugby rivals with that most dangerous of qualities: confidence. The normal mantra - that Super 14 form does not necessarily translate into international form - is looking as tired as the South Africans are energised.
This is a wonderful development for world rugby but, in terms of New Zealand's World Cup hopes, could turn out to be right up there with cutting your leg off so you can run faster.
But the South Africans are also doing a fine job of tripping over their own feet.
Oregan Hoskins, head of the South African Rugby Union, overruled Springbok coach Jake White and included Stormers flanker Luke Watson in the training group of 45 (now 46) which gathered before the test series against England.
This is like NZRU chief Chris Moller adding a player to the All Blacks because he felt there weren't enough Maori or Pacific Islanders.
Watson is the son of Dan 'Cheeky' Watson, the winger who became a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 70s when he and his brother Valance decided to play for a black club. In white-dominated South Africa, this stuck in the throat like raw hippo steaks.
Such are the sensitivities of 'transitional' South Africa that Watson's continued absence from the Springbok team was blamed on his family connections. Even to an outsider like me, this seems colossal bunkum.
White and Watson don't see eye to eye. White has consistently declined to choose Watson, saying there are candidates ahead of him. Watson has been highly critical of White, saying he had done Bok rugby a disservice and there was no passion nor pride in the jersey.
Then Hoskins weighed in, selecting Watson over the top of White, saying: "Nobody can accuse us of not standing by Jake. It's not for the leadership to make the selections, but if the coach and selectors are seen to be making the wrong choices, then we need to look at the possibility of appointing new coaches and selectors."
It got worse. Hoskins made veiled threats over Watson's possible axing when White trims his squad and SARU deputy president Mike Stofile questioned other White selections. The Bulls' Derick Hougaard should be given a chance at first five-eighths instead of Butch James or Andre Pretorius; and Schalk Brits was a more mobile hooker than John Smit.
Whatever you may think of Jake White, he probably doesn't deserve any of this. It's an extension of the struggles he faced last year with insistent Government pressure for him to select a black flanker, Solly Tyibilika.
He is not in this current squad but now Watson is, accompanied by some ludicrous remarks from Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool who said White should regard Watson as a black player (even though he's white) and who should therefore be included in the Springboks ahead of white players of equal talent.
If White manages to get his Springboks to the World Cup final with all this cobblers, it will be a magnificent coaching achievement.
In his squad of 46, White has 14 black or coloured players: props Eddie Andrews and Gurthro Steenkamp, wingers Tonderai Chavhanga, Bryan Habana, Breyton Paulse, JP Pietersen, Akona and Odwa Ndungane and Ashwin Willemse; flanker Kabamba Floors; midfielders Wayne Julies and Waylon Murray; fullback Bevan Fortuin and halfback Ricky Januarie.
Most seem to be genuine international class although I'd have questions about Andrews, Paulse (because of age, not quality), the Ndungane twins and Fortuin when it came to players capable of winning a World Cup.
Watson? I'd have to say that both Floors and Burger are genuinely ahead of him when it comes to selection and form.
You have to feel for South Africa - a country in which so much is still so wrong even so many years after apartheid ended.
Their social struggle is bigger than their rugby struggle, of course. But I still remember 1995 and the World Cup and Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar and the way the sport united that country.
Surely genuine achievement, with players selected on merit, is better than players selected politically and failing to achieve.
The latter, surely, would be failure on two fronts.
Winning on merit would surely help build the momentum to succeed on the other.
