People lived in fear of these barbarians.  Men would hide away their women and children in fear that they may get violated or stolen and used for the barbarians’ amusement.

Well, good thing that is in the past, because the new Barbarians, or Baa Baas, as they are also known, are playing rugby this weekend against the Springboks B or A, depending on which fence you like to sit on.

If the Boks were playing the ancient type barbarians you’d be guaranteed a few deaths and the definite possibility of seeing Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield wielding axes made from the bones of fallen enemies.  Not Scotland obviously, because they lost against the Scots…

But they’re not playing against the ancients; they’re playing against a team made up mostly of Australians.

They like running, and they’re coached by Nick Mallet, who continues to land the best coaching jobs in the world.  He coaches Italy, where, lets be honest, most people are happy if they don’t lose by too much, so there is no pressure, and now the Baa Baas, where there is, again, no real pressure.

It’s like being a teacher and either being given the mediocre class, who get straight C’s and nobody expects any more or any less, or a class of geniuses where everybody gets one hundred percent all the time without actually doing any work, for a day. Still Mallet this week was adamant that running rugby would be the order of the day, “We will do the same thing that the Barbarians always do – we will keep the ball in hand and look to score tries,” he said.

As for the Boks, they’ve had a tough tour, in that they lost to Scotland as I mentioned, so they’d like to finish their tour off with a win.  The youngsters are going to get a crack at proving themselves so I expect less kick and “chase” (hope) and more actual rugby, which will be great.

May the best team win, and if not, then the most entertaining one.

Some interesting trivia about the Barbarians:

• The costs incurred by the Barbarians in assembling a squad for each game or tour are paid out of the gate receipts from the match. So the bigger the crowd the better the pay.
• The Barbarians have no home ground or clubhouse. They are a touring club that plays at the invitation of clubs or unions and have visited all parts of the home unions.
• Zimbabwe beat the Barbarian in 1994 in a closely contested match 23-21
• In 1925 they introduced a blazer with a pocket badge of two lambs leaping with a rugby ball. Although it should not need explaining the two lambs were a play on the word Barbarian which starts with 'Bar' and 'Bar', hence the two sheep. The club has affectionately been called 'the Baa-Baas' ever since.