Give 'em the finger, Steyn!

My faith is restored. Francois Steyn’s citing for biting has been thrown out by the IRB. Hell, yeah. I mean, the whole thing was a farce to begin with. Surely he could not have been that stupid. It’s not like he was risking just the World Cup, no matter how huge that is; he would have risked up to a three-year suspension and his reputation as a player.

To be quite honest, the only thing worse in my mind that a rugby player could get caught doing is the ol’ finger — John Hopoate style. For those not in the know, former Australian rugby league international John Hopoate was banned for 12 weeks in 2001 after being found guilty of “interfering” with opponents.

“Interfering with opponents? What’s that?” you may ask. The West Tigers winger was said to have jammed his fingers up the backsides of three North Queensland players during a match.

NRL judiciary commissioner Jim Hall said: “I must say in my 45 years’ involvement in rugby league I’ve never come across a more disgusting allegation than I’ve had to deal with now.”

“There was pressure there. I know he wasn’t doing it accidentally. He was definitely pushing,” said North Queensland player Paul Bowman. “I was disgusted. I couldn’t believe it.”

Well enough of that, Steyn is no Hopoate, he has been cleared and we go into our last pool game against the United States looking in reasonable condition. I know like every one else that the performance against Tonga was piss poor, but, hey, we won and the fact that our first-stringers had such a big impact when coming on restored my faith. As did those three tries we scored in the second half — some of the best running rugby I have seen the Springboks play in years. Take a bow, Eddie Jones!

So we look ahead to the quarters where a likely undercooked Welsh side await. Everything is shaping up A-OK and as long as we stay injury free and don’t have any brain explosions, we should be taking the field come the final with one game between us and being world champions again. Viva, Bokke, viva!