Rooting Against Your Own Side? Who Dreamed this Up? | Lekker Rugby Pod

This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby. Prepare for something amazing. The unmistakable identity of our teams, the emotions blended into athletic performance breeds loyalty, and we call that thing a brand. There's nobody that MV and I like better in terms of branding than Ringo Rianlo, who brings that unmistakable vividity of storytelling, perfect joke writing, and an incredible sad story of attachment to Ellis Park and the Lions. Welcome, Ringo.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad you think I have a strong brand. These days that brand is being, you know, truant and not showing up and no, sorry, my kids are not in bed yet.

So the brand is morphing over time. But yeah, I'd like to think it's slightly sad, mostly happy, and intertwined with the Lions. You were talking to us before you got on about how you put your kids to sleep. And it's actually I never heard of this technique. So tell us, talk us through the Ringo method of getting the little ones to go to bed.

Oh, it's, it's well developed now. It's probably six, six years old, nearly that I've been doing this. Modern parents, you know, modern solutions. Cell phones are small, they can be put very dark. So you put your child in bed, you kiss them goodnight, you tell them you love them very much this after the story, and maybe have milk.

And then you put on a Briana Banner Greatest Drives compilation on your phone, and you go stand in the corner. And you just keep watching that. And by the time that 20 minutes video is up, thank you, Andrew Ford, and your child is fast asleep. The goat of counting sheep. Rugby, rugby lags other sports, almost painfully on the idea of branding, almost the embarrassment of like, oh, should we even have a brand?

We shy, we shy by branding. But ultimately, this is how I understand it, is a successful sports team. The fans themselves are the stewards of the story. They tell the story through icons. I remember you and I when we were at Ellis Park, and we were so happy, then we were sad.

And so it doesn't really take a lot of marketing. It's these sub brands, by player, by shared tale, by shared experience, and it's emotions blended in. And I suppose the point is, it breeds loyalty. Yeah, iconography, a uniform that's, you know, sport is the new tribe. In the old days, it would be, I'm walking in the bush with my family, and then I walk into your family somewhere in the bush, and we each have a way of showing who we are and our own iconography.

I'm the blue tribe, you're the red tribe, we hate each other, we start fighting. Now, luckily, that's not happening anymore. We've become more civilized. And now we do it through sports. So I love the color red.

Why? Because I love the lines. I'm sure you love a pale blue, Envia and Henry, a blue and white hoop system. That is how we show who we belong to, what group we belong to, and branding is that way we do it. You know, you look at some of the sports developed in northern, northeastern, industrialized England in the revolution, and started to have more leisure time, and also the idea of sort of sport as war, you know, and so Everton versus Liverpool and all this.

It strikes me that there was more uniqueness around the iconography back in the day. Whereas today, the athletes have the same tattoos, they know each other, often they play on the same clubs for a few years, then they're not the enemies, but they're friends. And the DJs are almost like going to a wedding in France. Like, if you go to a wedding in France, you know that the third song is It's Raining Men in every single wedding. Why?

It's because I think social media and the more homogeneity of youth and what their styles. I actually think it'd be fun if it was very different to go to every single rugby match. Yeah, it would be great. I mean, you probably know it way better than we do. You go to a San Antonio Spurs game, and it's the Mariachi Nights or something, and it's rainbow colors, the next day you go to a LA Lakers game and it's purple and yellow.

I mean, you couldn't be more different when you go from place to place. I know it's much more clear in France. Always go back to the French club game. If you go to a La Rochelle game, it's yellow everywhere you look. But if you go to a Luz game, it's red.

You go to a Bulls game and you go to a Lions game where they play each other, you could close your eyes and you wouldn't know what stadium you're inside of. Neil Diamond will come on at some point on the radio. It's like they have a shared playlist. These guys just play. They all have the same company doing the same fire, spouting out of the ground, the same fireworks companies.

There is a distinct lack of trying something different, trying something really, really out of the blue. The Sharks, funnily enough, they seem to get it probably because they have American owners. They do the kids running around. There's a pool, there's a restaurant that's clearly visible from the sideline. I would love for that to become much more common, at least in South African rugby.

Maybe it's an issue of our franchises. I have seen in the World Cup and Soccer World Cup, the Norwegian team does this communal row and if it's fans or if it's players or if it's people in an airport or anyone, and they've even gotten other people who are not Norwegian fans to buy into it, sit on the floor and then go and they have a drum and they beat it. It's something different. It catches your eye and right now if I said Norwegian football team, everyone knows this rowing thing. I do think there's something there for us.

When I was in Eden Park, I always wanted to know why is Eden Park so hard to win at? Really, it's because it's so dark. The lights are terrible. They're absolute rotten and everyone who gets there is late and they're all drunk and they all wear black. The overall experience is we're all blind, we're all drunk, we're all late and it seems like everyone's a guy.

There's no women there and it just feels like, what is this? It's some kind of weird, demented, drunken funeral somewhere really far away from home and it's scary. I do think, we're kind of short selling, Loftus is a vibe in the sense that when you go into Loftus, you and I have walked in there before, it's the smell of flesh. Big bars, men wearing parkas, women wearing their boyfriend's parkas because they forgot to bring theirs. There is an idea there and probably the playlist is slightly different now.

They've got the lights, so we'll see if that gets developed into something even more fancy. Obviously, like I said, the sharks are unique. The stormers are now the fancy one for me because they've got the three stripes on the shoulders. Their clothes look better than anyone else's. They've got the very fancy stadium.

That's like, yes, we are the most modern of all, but a bit clean maybe. Then, I don't know, maybe the lion should lean into the dingy where in the hood. Leave some of the graffiti on the walls. Don't clean it off and just lean into it. Like the raiders, I think it was the LA raiders in America, they lean into the They had the owner, Al Davis, that just said, just win, baby.

And he specifically recruited all the worst actors, all the worst behavior. So, he would have had a lot of Pollocks. He would have just keep going with Pollocks and add a pirate and a biker. Maybe the sincerity thing for the lions, just leaning into the Chris Smith kind of approach. The boyfriend you should have married, but you didn't.

Maybe it's like that instead of trying to be, just don't even try to copy anyone else. Be exactly who you are. And you mentioned Pollock there. That's another thing. We're trying to brand people now, certain players.

That's the next thing we're trying to copy now as rugby. But we haven't figured out yet how to make the clubs themselves ultra unique and not homogenous. Like you said, sincerity would be nice. Know what you are. Know where you're from.

Realize this is who I am and lean into it. I would be so happy if the lions did something to say, look, this place does look a bit ugly, but it's safe. Look at us walking on the street here. I wanted to make something like that a hundred times already. Or if you're going to lofters, look, this is a very Afrikaans place.

Come with us. Enjoy the Afrikaans vibe. Look, this is Durban. We surf. It's fun.

So, for me, Ellis Park would be branded around, I survived. I've survived three games at Ellis Park. I've survived 14. Also, sell the idea that you can take a piss anywhere. There's lots of places to take a whiz around Ellis Park and no one seems to mind, which I think is quite nice.

It's the place for the tough. You come here because you're brave. You're not scared. Like you said, I survived. I go there.

I'm not scared. I'm not going to listen to the people that say, no, you can't come here. You'll die. No, it's not true. Whereas I think stormers are right to just own it, which is, it is fancy.

You are taking your girlfriend there. It's okay because there's plenty of places inside to go to the bathroom. And there's amenities. Amenities everywhere. I think it's quite special to find an amenity in some stadiums.

I know I was at one in, oh, it was Munster. Like there's no amenities. Like, good luck. It's like get in and then good luck. I hope that you find something to eat.

Very down to earth. Very down to earth. I mean, I don't know if you've been, you've never been to a Friday night curry cup game, the Pumas versus the Lions at Ellis Park. No shutters are open. You take your own food packet there if you want to eat anything.

Smuggle your own shawarma in your park. No, you don't have to smuggle. No one's going to stop you. The security guards don't have it even a showdown. They might take a cut.

So we do struggle on sub-branding. I think it's called sub-branding where like, you know, the Michael Jordans superseded Chicago Bulls. There's not that many rugby players that you just say, that guy's brand. And it sounds detestable to the old timers. That guy's brand is as good or as big.

You know, Siakulisi has something along those lines. But the minute they do that, then rugby sort of shits on them and says, no, no. Hey, what are you doing? Yeah, it's that tall poppy syndrome thing. You must cut down the one that sticks out above all the rest of them, you know, which I understand.

It gives rugby this nice teamwork vibe, this feeling of togetherness, of brotherhood or whatever. But in the modern day, it would be nice to have the one icon, the one everyone looks at, that somehow the South Africans, even if it's not a South African, will put on a pedestal as well. That would be nice. We do tend to tear each other down, especially, you know, if you don't have the credentials and all that kind of stuff, which I suppose is true in other sports as well. Michael Jordan became Michael Jordan because he won, what was it, five rings or something, six rings.

But maybe we should do that. We do that definitely in our country with guys like Iban or whatever. But it would be nice if, you know, Iban could be the guy that's on every billboard or every video game cover or every magazine cover. This guy is rugby world over, you know. We haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Pollock, we're really trying very hard with him, but he hasn't won anything. So how can you put him on that pedestal already? It is funny when you go to other countries and you see, like, what you think is going to be their most popular player on billboards and buses. And then you go there, you see. So in Ireland, I was surprised how much Caelan Dorris there is.

You know, he's the it boy. I was surprised in France that they really were not always about Antoine Dupont. Inside the French marketing system, there's guys like Intermec that is, you know, really pushed because of his looks over the performance. I think what we do is, if you're the fly off, you have a limited amount of time of shelf life before everyone just tries to completely eviscerate you. So then you're Andre, and then it has to be passed over to Marnie, and then Marnie is Sasha, and now it's going to be Vusi, it's going to be Ahmed, whatever.

But you're going to have your time, and then you're going to just be mercilessly scavenged like vultures in Cuba. Yeah, how dare you not kick one penalty out or something? I'm guilty of it myself. I think it's something we have learned in recent years to kind of be more calm with in South Africa, but it happens. If you go, like I said earlier this week, the Vusi, Moyo versus Yakin Ahmed wars are going to be something to witness, you know, because Vusi is now starting for the Springboks this weekend, but Ahmed played incredibly last night for the Juniorboks, so already the stories online are Sasha.

We've got Sasha, but Ahmed looks pretty good. He's got a rocket boot on him, but Vusi is starting this weekend, so that's already starting, and maybe that should be the brand, the three kings, the three young kings, you know, who are coming up for the Pollards and those guys. I'm on team Ahmed because I like that he tries to kill the ball when he kicks it on poles, even if it's right in front. He absolutely smashes the ball. I love that.

It sounds good. I don't know if you've listened to the sounds of his boot, but it's like a very well-struck cover drive or something, you know. He probably doesn't even feel the ball hit his leg, but now I have to be team Vusi and say, yeah, but he's selfish. He doesn't pass the ball, and sometimes Vusi is a much better distributor. They've already taken their places in the predictable cattle shoots, like you have to be here and you have to be here, and they've already in the money, Sasha, you know.

So you have a brand. I have a brand. MV has a brand. Our shows have a brand. You famously branded me, and I loved it, the rugby weirdo, which I own.

I like that, and I embrace it. What's your brand? It's hard to say. I've been called too clever for my own good before. Cleverness does not mean wise.

It doesn't mean you know anything. You just come across like you know something. I don't know. Maybe it's, God, a loudmouth know-it-all who doesn't actually know it all. That's my brand.

I like to be that way. But I think we also know that you know that you don't know it all, so it's okay. Self-awareness is probably a good, is one of my strengths I like to lean into, yeah. Tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, so there is a thing that people are trying to brand right now.

Rugby is trying to brand a thing called the Nations Championship, which is an extremely unimaginative title for, that's the first thing I'd say, is why did it have to be called the Nations Championship along with the Rugby Championship? What do you think about the name of it and how they're branding it so far? I like the colors, you know. The actual graphic design of it is nice to me, but rugby does itself no service with its names. How many championships or nations or whatever can there be in the world?

You know, you've got the Six Nations Championship, Rugby's Greatest Championship, the Greatest Rivalry, Nations Championship, Nations Cup, which is just below it, Pacific Nations Cup, the Rugby Championship. Can we find other words, please? This could have been The Greatest Rugby Nations Championship. Just, I mean, it is the clash of the hemispheres. They're really trying to lean into the clash of the hemispheres, even though, like you told me the other day on chat, you're actually actively rooting against your own hemisphere, because that's how you get to the final.

You don't want New Zealand to beat the other Northern Hemisphere teams, because then they go above you on the log. It's like the Reverse Nations Championship or something like that. I would have called it the Dirty Dozen or something like that, you know. Go a bit more guttery. We're always trying to be this high-rolling thing.

The Big 12, you know. My Big Six against your Big Six. What I don't like about that, Ringo, is they have these stats, running stats, and like NBA tells me, where's the actual table, the log? Instead, we're fed these like comparative stats, and it says line-out percentage by hemisphere. I'm like, if there's one stat I've never cared about, and I'm never going to care about, what is the compilated line-out stats where Japan is part of my Southern Hemisphere?

I just don't care. Do cool things that people actually fight about, like how many people went to the stadium. Okay, this game was this many thousands of people, and really put that in front and center, because that's something we can argue about. No one cares about a line-out stat. No one's ever said, oh, but my team's line-outs are so much better than your team's line-out.

No. We fight about, we had 50,000 people at the stadium. Yes, it was awful, but it was more than your 40,000 full backup, and then save that, and when we go north, we can see again if the stadiums are full. I'd like to get a bit dirtier, a bit nastier in this stuff. Yeah, so they're trying to build an inter-hemispheric, but they've actually mistakenly built an intra-hemispheric rivalry.

So, one way you could do that is that the fortunes of your hemisphere also matter on that finals weekend. You get free food. You get free beer. You get the better seats. You get cranberry chinos that you can pull on and twicken them.

Or is it the Davis Cup, the tennis Davis Cup, where it's multiple teams or players in a country team, and then if Federer's doing well, you better do well if you want the Swiss team to go through. So, if we, the South, want to win, we better make sure Australia win a few things, or otherwise the points table works out for France or something. Make the hemispheres work together. You're like, okay, the two hemispheres fight it out, and between all their matches, whoever has the most, I don't know, highest points difference or most tries scored, that hemisphere is the best for this year. So, we make sure Australia, guys, who do you need?

Can we send over a coach to help you with your tackle technique for this weekend, so that we make sure the Southern Hemisphere tackle count stays good. There's only red cards for the Miami Turquoise Southern Hemisphere, but for the Orange Northern Hemisphere, there's 20-minute red cards or something like that. What do you think has worked, then, in the Nations Championship branding so far? What works, in your opinion? I like that it is everything.

Every match you watch has the same score bug at the top. It looks the same on every game. The try animations look the same. They did it a few years ago with the Autumn Nations series, or whatever they call that. That's also Nations and whatever.

They made every match have the same graphic design. It's all part of this big series. I like that they've done that. They've made it holistic. We all used to have our three-match series with each country.

It would be different branding. Super Sport would do the branding in South Africa and Sky in New Zealand. Now, Sanzar and Six Nations have worked together. That's cool. I like the idea that everyone gets that little white patch, except New Zealand, for some reason.

They obviously said no. Every score bug is the same. There's one website you go to. They still haven't gotten one YouTube channel. You still have to go to each country's YouTube channel to watch their team's highlights, which is silly.

Just put all that together in one place as well. I do like the holistic branding. That makes it feel like one big thing. I like the statistical framework. I like that on penalties conceded, they distinguish between whether you conceded on attack or defense.

There's no defensive coach that minds a few penalties given on defense. Three versus seven, or even teams go kick out anyway, so you've actually avoided the try early, and no one's going to get carded early. That's cool. Also, they've subdivided every kind of kick, so you can do a cross-section and realize how different the All Blacks are in the same hemisphere as South Africa. 85% attacking kicks versus 36%.

There's no other team sport in which the tactical framework is that different at number one and number two of a sport. They almost always mimic each other. And then I do kind of like that it makes the French, with the exception of Dupont, it makes them send the best players. Nothing else has ever made them send the best players down to New Zealand, so that's interesting. Yeah, yeah.

And it's cool. I think what happened with the stats and that stuff is we, because it used to be the Southern Hemisphere, I don't know when is the last time you went on the Rugby Championship website. That thing was created in 2000, you know. It's so old. It's horrible.

It's so bad. When you go on the Six Nations website, it's new, and they're obviously using the Six Nations stats trackers because they are always way better at tracking stats, so that's nice that that's come into this series now, and like you say, we can divide things up like that. I've also liked the fact that Fiji, okay, with not great success, but Fiji and Japan seem to have been pulled into this like brotherhood and said, okay, you are also part of what matters. You need to shape. I just wish they would put them in their own stadiums.

That's the one big issue. Yeah, and it does throw off the stats, Fiji being there and not caring very much, because everyone's going to have balloon stats on that one match, but not everyone gets to play Fiji, so it's going to throw everything off. What sucks? What bites? What's terrible?

What is the worst so far about their branding initiatives? The travel, and it just seems to be a lottery who gets to play where. You would think they would all come south, except for Japan. Why are they part of us? We should have found another country in the south somewhere that we could play.

Maybe Chile or something, but yeah, just the fact that Ireland could, I know this is not branding, this is more the travel side of things, could refuse to go to Japan. Just send your B team to Japan, Ben. That's what other teams do. That's what France would have done. Build depth, send them to Japan, and then your good team could have stayed down in New Zealand.

Don't force, I think Fiji, they chose to go to England, which is unfortunate. I'm sure their players would have liked to play in Suva or something, but it wasn't made by them. Yeah. The irony was that they only drew 15,000 fans wherever they were anyway. But secondarily, I think the big violin, the violin playing is unavailing because Fiji was the one who wanted this.

So people should stop saying that. I think Ireland is the better example. Like you say, why did Ireland get what they want? What's behind all that? Yeah.

Why did they get special treatment? Can we then do that when we go north? Can we say, no, can we just play everything at Twickenham? Ireland were allowed to do that. It was good for the goose.

So they, I mean, if they had to leave, they were in Australia first, then up to Japan, then back down to New Zealand, they would have been the team that traveled the furthest of any team in the competition. But then don't make this competition. You knew what you were making when you started the thing. So just suck it up or split squad. That's what we do.

It'll build depth. You had some interesting observations about what was a missed trick here, which is the French against the box. How would you brand that? Yeah, I thought, okay, the French always send down their B team. Well, B slash C team.

We should have a, this is not actually a pipe dream. If we still went back to three, three test things, maybe that should be the final, you know, you never send your, your A team south, send your B team, but then we will also play our B team. We won't call it Springbok 15 versus the French Barbarians or what are they called again? We'll call it the box versus the French, but it'll be B teams. And then we'll just call it the tests of depth to see who's got the deepest pool.

What I quite like about that is if you stacked it all in one day, it would be like having the under 19 Ds and then under 19 Cs. It has a nice Saturday morning vibe. Yeah. What about Argentina? Tell me about how the branding, because I always thought Argentina had this sort of, they were settled with a brand, which was that they were a bit football diver.

They were a bit biter from back in the day. They were a bit, you know, great. They were a bit, they were a bit nasty. And now they've got this preposterously handsome coach, young, he's got a vibe. Levany doesn't get on the field anymore.

It's just a bunch of good looking, you know, swashbuckling footballers. So how do you think they've changed? Yeah, they, they, they're actually quite scary now. They are the three in the big three in the South now, sorry to say Australia, but it is now South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina. If Argentina decides to show up, they are always terrible.

Their first game of the year. So that was their Scotland game. Next match, they absolutely smashed Wales. I just wish for the sake of people watching their games at 12 o'clock at night on this side of the planet, get better stadium mics. It's so bad.

It always sounds like there's no one's making a sound in this stadium. You can literally hear punnies swearing on South African television rugby matches, you know, please get mics pointed at the crowds in Australia, in the Argentine games. I need to hear them screaming and shouting. They sing so well. I was at a, at a game, who was playing like, uh, some URC match between the dragons and the lions.

And there was a Argentine high school, a bunch of boys right behind me in the stands singing, singing, singing, going crazy for 60 minutes of the game until the coach had to tell him, Hey, be quiet now. And shouting at them because they were obviously singing something in Spanish that was very dirty, but we were all enjoying ourselves. I'm sure you would have been blushing if you were there, Eric. So get that onto the mic. I want to hear that.

That'll up, just up the culture and the vibe in the stadiums. What is it that makes it look so weird? Like you watch a game from Argentina. I think it's partly because they are seated in these blocks and it looks like they could lock them down like a submarine, like close off this part and this part and you cannot move. And, uh, yeah, it's the actual look of it as well.

Yeah. It's something weird with the cameras as well. It's got like a desaturated look like the greens are not as green as they should be in the blues or not as blue. The stadiums often look like prison yard stadiums, like they're making the longest yard or something. There's never a roof for some reason.

And yeah, you can't hear the crowd. It always, and it's always obvious that the commentators are not there. It always, the commentators are a thousand kilometers away watching on a stream as well. Just making it up. I actually, uh, on a serious note, Espartamos is a great initiative in Argentina.

Everyone should look it up where they went into prisons and frustrated with the level of recidivism. They taught rugby to the worst, the toughest guys in Argentina in prisons. And it's, it's like an 80% turnaround. Not only do they do something in prison that makes them healthy and, and happier, but when they come out, they attach to a local rugby club, which as you know, inherently has this culture around it that will look in for you, help you, you know, get you through stuff. So that's fantastic.

I've been, I've been a supporter of it and, uh, I got invited to the Argentine embassy. I will just say this, the scariest guys I've ever seen in my life were there at the, at the reception. Uh, and, and they couldn't have been nicer. I actually think that, so that's an example of branding of a, of a story that needs to be told better by Argentina. I'm sure of it.

There's no way that that's not, that that should be told better. Um, what about the high ticket price posh, the posh box? Are we becoming a different brand now with ticket pricing and vibing and, you know, what, what do you think is that trajectory for Springboks? It seems to be that the Springbok brand is trying to premiumize itself. Um, even though we're trying to get the sport into more and more diverse demographic in South Africa, obviously it was always in the old days, pre my time, uh, a sport for select few people.

And that's been changing, especially since Rossi came in as coach. Um, I think he made it a mission of his to get a bigger part of South Africa, supporting the Springboks successfully. I think, um, there's more people watching it than ever before. More guys, more diverse girls, guys, whoever, and playing it. But I think in the endless chase to get that end of year financial, um, book to just balance, to at least get out of the red and into the black or just at zero, they are trying to use, um, make the brand more expensive.

Nike came on board. The website's changed. It's gotten fancier. Um, they are no longer sponsored by things like, you know, an Oppo cell phone. No, now it's Samsung, the good cell phones or the, the Oakley sunglasses that used to be just keep sunglasses.

Everything they're doing is the good brands now. And that is definitely shifting them out of the lower middle-class into a more, you know, greeny, leafy, Rosebank type vibe, um, in South Africa, at least in Jo'burg. Even in front of Paul D'Amelio's at the press conference, there's going to be a Coca-Cola can with a brand and Sia Kulisi on the Coke can. This is definitely, you know, it's, it's, it's taking steps, uh, to branding valuation and the Akoli group fiasco. There was a lot of talk about, but the brand is amazing.

And, uh, it's, it's very difficult to value a brand as you know, like you're not going to sell the box. How do you sell the box? Uh, you could do that with Liverpool or manual because you literally might sell it to Saudi. Um, but what do you think is the rise? Like I kind of think skinny Rossi and smart Felix, and we're pinching all these guys from England.

It's definitely a different vibe than the old springbok brand, if you will. Yeah, it's, it's modernized, definitely more global, um, more inviting to the outside world. I think even though our fans will try and kick you out every chance they get from a springbok perspective, I think it's become more emotionally intelligent as I think Rossi is himself, um, a brand that is more open, more inviting. Um, even though slightly more expensive, whereas the old springboks would have been, you know, the log at the crawl, the fight back, the, we are standing on ground to invaders where it's now, it's not like that. It's that borders are open.

Come in. We want your knowledge. We want your expertise. We know you make us better. Um, that's definitely, uh, the new springboks for me, not to rile up anyone in this greatest rivalry, but have the all blacks sort of become, are the, are the new all blacks of the old box and vice versa.

So once upon a time, innovation belonged to New Zealand, not even Kiwi land, but in Kiwi coaches who were abroad. And now it's South African coaches who are abroad. Uh, Franco, John, uh, like it's, it's too many to mention actually, who are, and then the players being in Japan and mixing and mingling, uh, trying things like, you know, picking up a guy and running with him through the field. Um, and it's New Zealand. It's like, no, we must play proper rugby.

You must have phases and cleaners. Is there a danger that the all blacks have become a bit boring? I think they've become inflexible. Um, they like rubber that's been in the sun too long. You know, um, they used to be this malleable shape that could take ideas.

Like you say, they went out, they send their missionaries out, they learn things, they came back, they brought to the country. And now it just seems like they've become no, the New Zealand way is the correct way. Zero minutes of downtime, no tying your shoelaces before the line out. This is how rugby must be played. And I, I don't think it'll ever die or go away, but it might be in less peaks and slightly the ceiling will always be, or the floor will always be higher than, I don't know, seven out of the top 10 countries in the world, but the ceiling might never be as high as it was in the past because it just feels like, yeah, there is an inflexibility unwillingness to change.

I mean, they don't want the patches on their shoulders. Um, just that is just a makes everyone want to not invite you to the next bride, to the next meeting. No, the shape of the game will send you the email, the minutes of what we were talking about. They, they remind me of aging hippie hippies. Like once upon a time, they were very bohemian and, and free love and all piling into the combi or the little bug, you know, and going to the beach.

But now it must be that way. They make it and they made it a ritual. For example, they have no idea how to use a bench, you know, whether it's the fun squad or the bomb squad, they don't use it. It's still a, you got benched. These are my guys.

Oh, you have to bring someone on. They have no idea how to use it. Secondarily, Dave Rennie's brand. I mean, he's so dour. Is that the right word?

He's so grim. He looks, he looks like he's not having fun. And then you go over to the Rossi brand. He's always picturing his fellow coaches, assistant coaches in various states of inebriation. Showing thumbs up to the crowds in Dublin.

You know, he's just a naughty boss. I, that's just, I think that's rush. He might sometimes come be a bit oafish and, and be stepping it or put his foot in his mouth, but you can tell there's a clear, like I said, emotional intelligence. He can, he can cop it when he's been wrong, learn from it and take in those learnings and change, which is something I think he has done. He often says, yes, he made a huge mistake with the lines to, uh, with the referee thing.

Um, and, and that's showing you learn whatever way. Yeah. I think if you put Dave Rennie, two photos of him 10 years apart, they will look exactly the same. You know, it does maybe inside. I've been told he's a very warm man.

He loves to play guitar. Um, a dad kind of in, in the change room where Rossi's is not a dad, he's more like, I don't know. He's not a teacher either. He's a, he's a boss. He likes to have fun, but when you need to work, you better shut up and you sit at your computer and work, or he will shout at you.

He's not scared of doing that either. And they still, um, well, Joe Schmidt as well. He's a Kiwi. They wear a suit, a suit and a tie. They like to wear the dark suit, the black tie, the white shirt, and, and, and, and, and, and, they like to wear the dark suit, the black tie, the white shirt.

Um, even if it's sweating and they're uncomfortable as all coaches get by the end of the game, they're literally like tearing it stuff. Um, you know, it's, it, it seems like with the, the death of super rugby without, with it not being, you know, uh, including the Argentines and South Africans that they've really became even more isolated. Uh, and I worry about that for them, especially for Australia, because all they try to do is be like New Zealand, but they're not as good, but they're not getting enough different looks at ways to play the game where they could actually beat New Zealand. George. Um, well, Jordan broke the record now for most prize scored by, uh, uh, all black.

How many of those were against Australia? There must be a percentage of them. You know, they, uh, that is one of the saddest things in the world for me. I love super rugby. I grew up with super rugby.

It was one of my favorite things ever. Every, I miss so many varsity classes because of super rugby failed so many courses. Um, and it's because New Zealand are too good for the Australia teams. Um, and they constantly mentioned the other big looming issue, the NRL. And apparently that's now got a nearly $6 billion TV deal coming down the pipeline.

You know, it just seems darker and grimmer and grimmer, and that's no good, not just for them, but for the rest of world rugby. Do we need to have less incredible teams at the top of world rugby? No, we want more and we can't be losing, losing these sides. So I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to, how to improve super rugby.

Maybe it should rather be something like an NPC and a Australia rugby championship. And then at the end of the season, you have a play or four between the best sides, but something to get the Aussies just feeling good about rugby. And then something to, I don't know, make the New Zealander clubs worse or something, thin them out using the NPC so that they don't just keep beating the Aussies over and over and over again. So actually the super rugby needs to steal the idea from nation's championship and ensure that there is an Australian in the, uh, in the final. So is Scotland, Australia, is Scotland, the Australia of the six nations?

Maybe the Australia of 2003 or something now, because Scotland are very good. Um, just not good enough as we saw in the past weekend. Um, they somehow, how do they play so well with only two professional clubs in the entire country? That's, that's for me, the it's almost like a miracle that they are so good at rugby. Um, Australia could maybe learn a thing or two there about how to maximize what you have.

Um, I would, I would say, um, probably Scotland or slightly above Australia right now, probably the ranking show that as well, uh, maybe or Scotland or more the Argentina of, of the six nations. It's in, in this respect is that they're really happy with losing bravely, but they kind of like it. You would have thought, you would have thought that Scotland won because they were so excited about their play. And then they actually lost by 14. It is, it is that it's a joke now.

It's just a meme, you know, a brave, the brave loss, the brave performance, and you still it's 43 on the board. You know, you, you did terribly, you did not win easily or even get close to winning. It just looked like it. The most fascinating branding for me out of all these teams in the nation's championship is Ireland. I cannot decide, decide whether they good or bad guys.

There's parts of that. I look at them and I go, you guys are definitely in an eighties film. You're the bad guys from private schools. You're clearly the villains. Yeah.

Your lives are too good. You're living in too nice a house. Uh, and then I say that, I think, Oh no, our friend growing is going to be mad at me. And so I revert wildly over here, Pat McCary is, but they're decent guys and they're very smart. And they work really hard and, you know, they come from good families, but are they, are they in the end, do you think you would brand them as, uh, as the guys, the good guys or the bad guys?

I think to be the true bad guys, you have to be truly the best as well. You know, the bad, the bad guys were always the Saracens who won everything and the all blacks who won everything. The crusaders. Yeah. Yeah.

The crusaders who won everything. Probably we might not see it from our perspective, but the springboks are the bad guys. You know, we throw our forwards forward illegally from kickoffs and we do do bad kickoffs or to set up scrums and that kind of stuff where we are the bad guys right now. So I would say they might be the, the sidekick to the true bad guy. You know, the mean guy who you, you, you, the Grima Wern tongue or something, the second hand, the second inch or the guy who gets killed early in the show, in the movie, who you think is a true bad guy, but then his actual boss comes out, you know?

Oh, okay. See, my problem with the box has bad guys. Things is this increasingly the casual fan. I mean, really casual fan who doesn't know much about rugby at all. They quite liked the box.

And I attribute that to the failure there to be the bad guys is that the players are too nice. I mean, find me a bad, find me a player in the box right now that you don't like, you know, there's a, there's a couple sort of Darby, like, you know, the Bulls fans don't like him and Russ, whatever, but it's, it's internationally the nice guys. Rossi is now a nice guy, although probably they still think secretly he's not, but still he acts on the outward, like, I'm good. It's just the fans, like, box fans are the bad guys. Yeah.

Because they just cannot see any other argument and they just pile drive people on Twitter. Yeah. I, I, I, I have this fantasy of one day just saying something bad about the Springboks on, on Excel, just to see how much I can attract and then just delete the account. Cause it is so easy. I warn you, I beseech you as a friend, don't do it.

So I just think it's very difficult. When I look at Peter Sette toy, Marco Marx, I mean, it's really just difficult to find someone not to give us right now. They need envelopes. So these are just nice cats. Yeah.

I, I, I, I, a good bunch of them do come from means, but there's a whole lot of them that do not come from very good lives, you know, and that makes a huge difference in the perspective perspective you have with someone how it feels like punching down. If you say someone like my Pimpy is the bad guy when he's worked from nothing to become one of the best Springboks of all time. So how could that be a bad guy? It is, it is the players that make for me, the, the box not be the bad guys. Maybe we're just, yeah.

Our fans are the guys at this stage. And even the fans are starting to realize it. I've seen the, the, the, the thing is turning online. Yeah. I think it's, it's almost like in the self-awareness, like we were talking about if there was a Bach fan, a Bach player, I'm sorry, but you had to brand.

They said, I'm sorry, Ringo, but we only have a budget for one. Who would you build the brand around? Who'd be the face of the new box? And let's say no one, no one over the age of 34. So, okay.

So the Khaleesi he's retiring. Yeah. We need someone new in place of Khaleesi. Who can that be? Riley Norton might be a bit too stiff upper lip, a bit too, he's a cricketer.

You know, everyone ever be behind that. Um, yeah, there must be someone that has to be a forward. Preferably can't be, can't be someone maybe Porthen, Zachary Porthen looks like he could be the type of guy that you could build something around like, um, the legend around Ox right now. Um, he seems like a guy I could get behind who would play many, many, many tests because at his age to be running over people the way he is already, there's many tests in him. Um, I still love, he hasn't been a Bok yet Siva Mahashe from the lions.

He looks like a kid as well. It might be between him and Paul de Villiers fighting for that six Jersey in years to come. I would love that, that to happen. Um, but yeah, maybe, maybe one of these new young teens, Busi Moyo or Ahmed or one of those, or Sasha, one of those guys, Sasha. I mean, it has to be Sasha.

Really? I don't know. I didn't think about it. The industry plant. Yeah.

He's there already for it. You know, he's, he's the good looking, good teeth, good talker, like great on camera. He's the guy he's a bit like Jude Bellingham for England in the football, uh, almost impossibly sculpted. Like, come on. If only the Beatles had written a song called Hey Sasha or something, you know, A good shout though, for Paul de Villiers, who is coming on strong, very leading man, jutting jaw, um, exceptionally humble, uh, from all appearances and, uh, is one of the rare guys who comes on and actually just like, everyone has to go, yeah, that's pretty good.

Like there's no dissenters. Yeah. It's, it's the Henry Brousseau effect, you know, you're just like, yeah, look how good this guy is. Of course he has to be a springboard. Look at the effect he has on the game influence, pure influence on the game.

That's what he does. There's every rock, every tackle, every attack he's there. I have to warn him though, when he sits in the press conference next to Rossi, it's important not to flex those biceps quite as much as, uh, as Paul did. It was a jarring contrast. He's not going to like that.

Yeah. Um, so in effect, what you're saying is we need more of this. We need more branding. Probably also need more fun and games around it. I find that a lot of the cheap branding officer of the, you know, the stormers, it's a bit stiff.

And, uh, I always wonder, are you understanding we're still selling fun in the end? Yeah. You remember the, the guy who was the blues head of, um, what's the name? The, the blues in New Zealand. Um, love that guy.

Yeah. Took himself not too seriously self-aware of the state of his team. And, you know, doesn't just do boilerplate like, um, stuff like, no, it will this offend anyone. Will this be seen as arrogant or something? No, just leaning to it.

And, and fun. Like you say, have fun with it. Um, the Saracens and the Bristol bears, they are starting to do that in the prem. Now, you know, they make fun of each other post and pregame. The bulls were doing that for a little bit until they did it once a bit too much.

And then they got hammered by the stormers and then that stopped, but then you lean into it and you say, Oh, uh, the brights were a little, the lights were a little bright for me there. We'll, we'll try again next time. I did like the blues guy. I think the blues had lost a lot of games in a row and they were the bottom of the table and he just flipped it around. Everything's fine.

And we still remember that. I mean, what, what can you remember that ever came out of the mouth of a bulls or stormers or sharks press release anything like that? I can't. Well, listen, Ringo, you put me to sleep with your wonderful chats. Uh, so I'm just like your kids now.

Uh, that's my friend Tylenol. No, it's been wonderful. There's no one that gets to get some more giggles and chuckles out of me than you, uh, about rugby. Keep coming, keep coming on here and reminding us that the thing is so funny and, uh, and find the sanctimony in rugby and let's puncture it. It's always a pleasure.

If there's anything I like to do is to make something serious into a joke to my detriment. This is the Lekker Rugby Pod only on Megaphone Rugby.

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