Boks have plenty of scores to settle

IRELAND and South Africa meet for the 19th time this afternoon and it promises to be a belter of a contest. How could it be otherwise given South Africa’s status as world and Tri-Nations champions against the host nation who captured the Six Nations Grand Slam for the first time in 61 years.

But there’s a lot more to this game than that. In a recently published book, Springbok captain John Smit claimed an unnamed “senior Irish player” was responsible for the refusal of the Lions to join his side for a beer after the Test matches last summer. If it was a “crime” on the parts of the Lions to delay socialising with the opposition until the end of the series, then it was one of minor proportions and Smit must have been stuck for something controversial to include and certainly made a mountain out of a molehill.

As David Wallace put it succinctly this week: “It was just somebody trying to sell books”.