Brenden Nel

Are they going to give up that 40 million?

And what happens to the World Cup Cup with the eight Champions Cup sides against eight Super Rugby sides that they're punting now?

If you're not part of it, you're not going to play in that.

So that's why, just to me, this whole thing's a red herring.

What it has exposed to me is the amount of vitriol and hatred up north for South Africa.

and uh one particular country um it comes out a lot uh some of the journalists who've been forecasting the end of urc from from the time it started so it'll be dead in three years it's now five years in and still breaking broadcast records and they're carrying on about that and and it's almost like they wanted to fail and you know i was last week i was on on a couple of calls with

A friend of mine in Wales, one of the journos in Wales, one of the journos in Ireland, and we spoke about it, and they said, just mate, over here, we're quite happy.

It's made our team stronger.

To me, I think it's a bit different for South Africa.

We've got this Barbarians game, which on the same day, we've got the South African A game playing against Zimbabwe, which should be quite one-sided anyway.

But Zimbabwe have qualified for the World Cup, so that's just to help them get some confidence.

some opposition.

And you'll see probably 60, 70-odd South African players in the camp for those two weeks.

So a much wider squad, and that'll get narrowed down.

England are the big test, mainly because I think there's a bit of a grudge whenever anybody plays England from the Southern Hemisphere, but especially after Mauro Toje and a couple of the other English players last year, when they were on this unbeaten streak, said, you know, we can't wait to play South Africa.

I think there's a couple of South African players who can't wait to play them either.

So, yeah, there's a bit of a grudge match there.

So, that will be the... Rossi will probably put his best team in against England.

Depending on how that goes, and he's very much a pragmatist.

He has his plans.