Tightheads & Loose Balls

● The ease of travel between Europe and SA was supposed to be part of the appeal when SA Rugby joined the Pro14. It was anything but for Ulster, who took 29 hours to get from Belfast to Port Elizabeth. They took a bus to Dublin, flew to Doha, Johannesburg and then on to PE. According to dispatches from the team, the long wait at different airports was made more bearable by Henry Speight playing his ukulele. If Ulster thought their 29-hour journey here took forever, wait until they experience the 45-minute flight from Bloem to Joburg today on SA Express.

● One of the Cheetahs’ main allies has largely been denied them since they started playing in the Pro14. They thought they could make European teams flying out from their winter suffer in Bloemfontein’s heat. “For some reason we seemed to be scheduled for evening matches. The only afternoon game we are getting is against

Treviso,” noted Cheetahs defence coach Charl Strydom. When it was put to him that those teams probably requested a more agreeable kick-off time, Strydom said: “I have no doubt that they do.”

● Thelo Wakefield, the ever-embattled president of the Western Province Rugby Football Union, filled a chair on SuperSport’s magazine show Phaka this week. He is in the last two months of his term and again claimed ignorance at the way the union unravelled financially. Wakefield, who has been president since 2012, went on to have a dig at journalists who he claimed wrote negative stories about the union. "Journalists are fond of writing negative stories about WP. We have counted — we have over 4,200 negative stories about WP.” Now we know how he has spent his time, instead of familiarising himself with his union’s plight.