David Leggat: No one's Speared this South African shambles

Imagine this. The New Zealand Rugby Union announce that next year the Super 14 franchise which finishes bottom of the country's five in this season's competition will be dumped.

Their place will be taken by a freshly constituted team based in Hawkes Bay, and taking in Manawatu, Taranaki and a couple of other lower-tier unions.

The new organisation are chuffed. They take root and start putting plans in place. This can't be done overnight so they're flat out a year ahead of their big day.

Then the NZRFU has a rethink. Maybe the new team isn't such a flash idea, maybe the infrastructure is a worry and anyway the team to go will be, ahem, the Blues. The Blues out of the country's biggest city, that is.

So they clear their throats and announce that it's not going to happen after all, oh and sorry for the inconvenience to you good Bay folk.

The NZRFU isn't perfect, but it would need to plunge unseen depths to produce that sort of shambles.

But that's just what has happened in South African rugby where the bosses have decided that the Southern Spears, who were poised to come into next year's Super 14 in place of the last-finishing franchise this season, now won't be going anywhere.

The Spears' promotion was announced last June and set in stone in December. That stone has now been revealed to be shifting sands.

The upshot is the Spears, who were to be based in East London and Port Elizabeth and were guaranteed a two-year term, are now contemplating legal options. They've even mentioned three of the more powerful letters in South Africa - ANC - might have something to say.

High-ranking African National Congress officials in the Eastern Cape - long the heartland of black African rugby, which obviously brings a tricky political element to the mix - are said to be insisting the Spears must proceed.

Plans were advanced, sponsors signed up, pre-season games against the Force lined up (not that that would have indicated much of their first-season prospects).

The South African Rugby board said after the pros and cons of the Spears had been thoroughly discussed it was decided they were not ready for Super 14 rugby, adding that to do so would "cause permanent damage if we now try to follow short cuts".

The about face might not be unrelated to the arrival of a new president, Oregan Hoskins, who does not owe any favours to the region, and the fact that the bottom South African franchise seems certain to be the pussy Cats, who just happen to be based in Johannesburg.

In South African rugby politics, they are the heavy hitters, even though they're rubbish on the park. Throw the Cats back to the second tier? Let's say, the Cats are far tougher off the field than on it.

The bottom line seems to be that after another study, the Spears aren't thought likely to be any better than the present five and need more time to get properly organised.

So it's probably the right decision, just handled with iron gloves. You might say, just another day of turmoil in the fractious world of South African rugby.

* If you know your English-German history, you'll love this.

English fans heading for soccer's World Cup in June are being encouraged to learn the words of their terrace chants in German.

Britain's Foreign Office has set up a website - britishembassyworldcup.com if you're interested - where it will post the translation for football chants.

The idea you suspect is partly aimed at defusing the tension which always surrounds England-German matches, due to You Know What. This has potential to go seriously wrong.

Next they'll be suggesting tattooed, pot-bellied blokes from Friends of Germany outposts like Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool wear lederhosen, slap their legs when dancing, eat buckets of bratwurst and drink plenty of beer to fit in with the locals. Two parts they'll do anyway, the others could lead to the odd spot of strife.

The website includes other bits and pieces like World Cup facts and useful sayings in German.

All you non-German speakers try this one: "Der ball ist rund". If you can't figure that one out, you'll never get "schlusspfiff", "querpass" or "papagei" - respectively final whistle, square pass and parrot (as in "he was sick as a").