Yeah. Let’s jump on the bandwagon folks. Boo Luke. Show the doos what for! Jeer him like he stole overexcitement from Noeleen. After all, nothing else can achieve the desired effect. Which, if I think things through correctly, must be for the Stormers to play their Super 14 matches to a season-long chorus of boos. That’s one way to boost your Super 14 form. The visiting teams won’t know what on earth is going on, and in all that confusion, the Stormers (or Cape Light Showers if we are being honest) will put 50 points past every team every week.
Well that’s my take on it at least. The debates on whether Luke is a doos or a hero raged on endlessly last year and I am not about to re-open them. Suffice to say I think the behaviour of the supporters at Newlands was someway below par. The fourteen guys on the pitch with Luke do not deserve to be subjected (they are on the pitch with him, it matters to them too) to that kind of nonsense. If you don’t like Luke, leave it for online forums and radio phone ins. Boo him at the mall if you like. It has no place at as great a cathedral of SA Rugby as Newlands. And it is just not rugby.
Doos or not, Luke is out there on the pitch dying for his team. I do not know of any man who’d venture out onto a rugby pitch with anything less than 100% commitment in his heart. Especially when he could say to hell with standing for his beliefs (however misguided) and go make a fortune in the frozen wastelands up North. All this boorish behaviour will achieve is to show that some people in the stands are as small minded and as lacking in maturity as the subject of their scorn. Luke had a fine game on Saturday and relatively poor ’08 form (apart from behind the mike, *snigger*) he remains a fine player and possibly our best classical mould fetcher.
You can believe that, after last year’s upheavals, he’s going out to prove himself and the 14 men around will help him achieve that. Rassie is no imbecile, he would not send out a disjointed and disunited team. If Luke is in there, it is because Rassie knows the team accepts him as one of their own still. He wouldn’t put him above the team or, if we are to reduce matters to such petty selfishness, his own career even.
So, people, put the nonsense aside and let’s support an SA team as they aim to help exorcise our Super Rugby ghosts.
Oh, except for when they play the Sharks. Boo anyone in blue and white all you like then. Please.
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