While it’s yet to be confirmed by either the Sharks or any specific club side over there, it’s looking increasingly likely that Frans Steyn will play out the 2014 season in Japan once Super Rugby has run its course for the year.
Steyn has apparently secured a grudging blessing from his SARU paymasters to take up a short-term Japanese deal, one which will limit his availability for the Rugby Championship and Currie Cup, but will see him return to the Sharks for Super Rugby in 2015 – hopefully in time to gain selection for the Springboks at next year’s World Cup.
Unlike the deals recently concluded by Keegan Daniel and Jean Deysel, Steyn’s trip to Japan will be a temporary one and will have little real impact on the Sharks, since it’s assumed as a Bok certainty, he would have been unavailable for Currie Cup duty in any event. That said, with both Ryan Kankowski and JP Pietersen battling to shake off their post-Japanese largess (with Super Rugby a good few steps up in terms of intensity) adding a third key player to the group that will miss the pre-season entirely cannot be a good thing for the Durban franchise.
You can understand Steyn’s position, though. The money on offer is, I’m sure, simply staggering and with SARU’s position on foreign-based players as fluid as it currently seems to be, it seems rather silly for any top player to not strike while the proverbial iron is glowing.
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Let him do it, doesn’t bother me. I nearly even support the boke under Meyer, so as long as he is back to play for the sharks all I have is a strong feeling of ‘meh’. I hardly think Kanko has been out of form? And JPP has been up and down, but he always has been that way. Steyn has been playing high intensity rugby since he was 18, some time in Japan will keep his body healthy and fit, while not putting to much strain on him.
Meyer’s fault with his insistence on picking overseas players. That opened the floodgates, just going to get worse.
I remember rubbing my eyes last year at how fat a certain outside centre became in Japan. Surely if you’re a professional athlete, regardless of what sport or league, keeping fit should be the least of your challenges
@Seth101 (Comment 1) : @PTAShark (Comment 2) : exactly couldnt agree more on both points
What gets me is where the Japanese clubs get the money to pay all these expensive overseas players. Rugby is surely not big in Japan (apologies Alphaville)
its pretty big. The kicker (as I understand it) is that big companies like Panasonic and Toyota by law have to invest a certain percentage of revenue into things like sports, recreation, social upliftment or whatever they call it. Rugby qualifies and it comes with great exposure for these companies. For example Panasonic does not sponsor the Wild Knights. They own it.
@Seth101 (Comment 1) : This years Kanko is in way better shape (body and mind) than last years version – I think he took a lesson from last year and made sure he was in shape but I dont think he is yet playing to the potential we all know he has.
It just shows how players now value the Currie Cup. After playing a ough super rugby comp the last thing they want to put their bodies thru is a tough currie cup on hard fields. So they extend their careers and bank balances by moving abroad. It allows their bodies to recover as they dont play week in and week out in japan and the money secures their retirement. So win win for players in demand. Will only get worse with new super rugby format
Hopefully by 2016 everyone will have moved to Japan so we can watch that instead of the new format Super Rugby.
really don’t like this deals, either play in Japan and stay in Japan or play in SA and stay in SA.
@SheldonK (Comment 8) :
I dont know if theyre denigrating the Currie Cup so much as willing to give it up to make a shedload of money.
Its a career and these deals fill the coffers. I know loads of guys that have done something similar, only difference is they arent professional rugby players.
BAck to my comment about the Currie Cup – I dont feel so much its that they dont respect the competition, but more that if they have to choose between missing out on SR, the RC, the OCtober tours etc, then the only one they can realistically miss is the Currie Cup. Does sort of help that the Japanese season coincides with the CC…
Rugby is well-attended in Japan. But thats largely because the companies sponsor the whole shebang and employees are sort of obligated to attend…
Hope Frans won’t become bigger in Japan 🙂
@Bokhoring (Comment 5) : Does Alphaville also have a song called “Big in Japan”? I had assumed everyone was referring to the Tom Waits tune…
@VinChainSaw (Comment 12) : nice force them to watch rugby ;-P
@Culling Song (Comment 14) : yes they had. Boet how old are you 12?
@JD (Comment 16) : Twelve-and-half, I’ll have you know…!
@Culling Song (Comment 17) : ok so if you were closer to 30 you would have know that ;-P
@JD (Comment 18) : So would anyone else on the site know about this obscure “Alphaville” you’re talking about…?
@Culling Song (Comment 19) :
I’m only 6 and I know Alphaville. One of the most famous bands in the world! Bigger than the Beatles and the Stones combined.
@Culling Song (Comment 19) : @VinChainSaw (Comment 20) : This is true, the Ville’s grandeur was never limited to the Japanese market only. The fact that they only obscurely allude to their dominion of the far-east islands should not be construed as an admitted short-coming on their part but rather the biggest understatement made in this and any other century.
@VinChainSaw (Comment 20) : Oh, you’re talking about *that* Alphaville! The band that claimed they were bigger than Buddha…!?
@VinChainSaw (Comment 20) : @Culling Song (Comment 17) : @JD (Comment 16) : Eish a bunch of kids on this sight or s it a case of ‘we are all forever young’ !
Alphaville really weren’t a particularly good band. Just putting that out there
@robdylan (Comment 24) :
Wash your mouth out you Philistine.
How good were you at music in 1981?
@VinChainSaw (Comment 25) : “some are like water, some are like the heat”?
Reckon I was writing better lyrics than that at the age of 4…
@robdylan (Comment 26) :
You cant be that dwas dude.
“some are like water, some are like the heat”?
MEANS
“Some get changed, some do the changing”.
I thought you songsters specialise in euphemism?
@robdylan (Comment 24) : Were there any good bands in the 80’s?
@Culling Song (Comment 28) :
ALPHAVILLE!!
@VinChainSaw (Comment 29) : That was a serious question…
@Culling Song (Comment 28) : Depeche Mode, of course
@robdylan (Comment 31) : The later 80’s stuff can pass the muster, but those early albums…?
@Culling Song (Comment 28) : Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Eurythmics, Pink Floyd, Human League, Genesis, Madness, Van Halen………………….. lots boet lots.
@benji (Comment 23) : LMAO ja boet.
@JD (Comment 33) : that’s actually a surprisingly good list. Of course, I consider Floyd to have been past their prime at that point (though still good), and Van Halen were friggin’ awful, but the rest is largely solid
@Culling Song (Comment 32) : ooh no…. A Broken Frame is a masterpiece! I’ll concede that Speak and Spell has few standout moments (although “Any Second Nov (Voices)” is a gem)
@robdylan (Comment 36) : It’s been decades since I listened to those albums, so I can’t really comment fairly. I just seen to recall that they were a bit too Erasure-ish for my tastes
@Culling Song (Comment 37) : well, the first one was largely written by Vince Clarke 🙂
@robdylan (Comment 38) : I text my case. Clearly a case where the departure of the main songwriter improved the band. Basically the inverse of Pink Floyd then
@Culling Song (Comment 39) : I meant to say “I rest my case”. For some reason I can’t save the post after editing
@robdylan (Comment 36) : @Culling Song (Comment 37) : this is what I truly love about this site. How it changed from a story about a player leaving to a discussion of 80’s music.
Motley Crue, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Metallica were some of my favourite 80s bands… which i mostly listened to in the 90s… 😳
@VinChainSaw (Comment 42) : LOL just as long as you got the 80’s education!!!! ;-D
@VinChainSaw (Comment 42) : Hmmm… Band of Susans, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, REM, Dinosaur Jr, The Smiths, Big Black, Joy Division, U2, Butthole Surfers, Depeche Mode, Scratch Acid, Shakespeare’s Sister… apparently I did actually like some 80’s music…!
@Culling Song (Comment 44) : so only baiting us?!?!?! Some great music in the 80’s even my teenage daughter is listening to my 80’s music and loving it!!!!
No mention of the Manic Street Preachers yet? Surely we have some of their fans on here? 😯
@vanmartin (Comment 46) : Are they the guys who sang “Big In Japan”…?
@Culling Song (Comment 47) : again with that really? !?!?! ;-P
@Culling Song (Comment 47) : Yes, yes they are.
@Culling Song (Comment 44) :
Some of those were real beauts!
I was fortunate enough to see REM live back in 2005. Still one of the best gigs I’ve ever attended.
@VinChainSaw (Comment 50) : I saw them around that same time; they were awesome!
@VinChainSaw (Comment 50) : yup… I also saw them and I concur.
@robdylan (Comment 52) : How was that Depeche Mode concert you went to recently?
oh and Rodriquez?
@VinChainSaw (Comment 50) : @robdylan (Comment 52) : The thing that impressed me was how genuinely their enthusiastic and spontaneous they were, even though at that point they’d been at it for 25 years. Huge contrast to the awful, rigidly scripted U2 concert of a few years prior…
@Culling Song (Comment 54) : Which Tom Waits album would you recommend for a beginner?
@Culling Song (Comment 54) : Why would I hate myself so much as to actually watch u2?
@Pokkel (Comment 55) : Start with his old stuff; The Heart of Saturday Night is probably a good place to start. Nice bluesy, dronkverdriet tunes. In the mid-80’s he released a trilogy of albums (Swordfishtrombones/Frank’s Wild Years/Rain Dogs) where he went kind of weird, and since then is been non-stop freakshow all the way… and all the better for it! Bone Machine is my personal favourite