Irish asked to defer tour

In what may yet be no more than another twist in the saga and another shot across the bows of Louis Luyt, the South African National Sports Council announced last night that they will ask Ireland and Wales to postpone planned rugby tours to South Africa until its dispute with the South African Rugby Football Union (SARFU) has been resolved.

The NSC also suspended the rest of the international programme and suspended SARFU from the council with immediate effect. The NSC made the announcements after a five-hour meeting to discuss their reaction to the refusal by SARFU chief Luyt and his executive to meet an NSC ultimatum to resign by midnight on Thursday.

The chairman of the NSC meeting, Gideon Sam said: "We will ask our friends in those countries that we are in the process of sorting out one of our members (SARFU) who is not in our good standing - we would request you to postpone your coming to South Africa. They don't have to listen to us. If they believe that they don't have to listen to us, we will cross that bridge when we get to it," he said.

An IRFU spokesperson admitted that the Union were "gravely concerned about this recent turn of events, but the IRFU are not in a position to make any definite pronouncement on the forthcoming tour until they receive formal communication from the relevant parties in South Africa, be it from the SARFU or the NSC."

Should a formal request to postpone the tour arrive at 62 Lansdowne Road on Monday, then a meeting could probably be convened within 24 hours to meet with the NSC's request. Even then, however, that would not necessarily mean the tour couldn't go ahead, pending the removal or resignation of the Luyt in the next week or so.