South African Lions throw in the jersey.

Wednesday night saw a woefully inept and gutless display from the Lions against the touring British and Irish Lions. A tour that comes around to South Africa once every 12 years was thrown into the kindegarten class as the touring team were met by whimper and all they had to do was go through some motions as if they were doing a non-contact practise.

Barring some outsiders, the Lions from Johannesburg had no real Springbok contenders but if they had played a better game then Pieter De Villiers and his Bok coaching team might have been given some idea of potential weaknesses in the touring team.

The blame has to be aimed higher than those on the field and squarely between the eyes of the administration.

As it is Johannesburg has seen it as a right to have a team in the annual Super 14 competition playing teams from New Zealand and Australia. That right to financial returns and status might be coming to an end rather soon as a team from the Eastern Cape starts to take shape.

The Southern Kings looking at possible inclusion in an expanded Super 15 have been criticised as not being up to the mark but the the Lions from Johannesburg have proved so inept this season that anything else would be better.

The Lions summarily fired their coach last week after stating that he would be in charge for the game against the touring Lions. The coach the Lions fired two years ago has led the Bulls to their second Super 14 championship win. Many senior players and young talents are joining the exodus away from Johannesburg and the list of players deemed expendable by the Johannesburg brainstrust that have then made a mark elsewhere in Currie Cup and Super 14 rugby is a lengthy indictment of the inept and woeful team running rugby in Johannesburg.

None of this has seemed to worry these complacent administration individuals but now it seems that sponsors and advertisers might start to object to their brands being associated with such ridiculous and spineless displays of amateur rugby. Money is all important and this might turn the tables and highlight the actual crisis that exists in Johannesburg rugby.

Comparisons with the Zimbabwean dictatorship under Robert Mugabe are not exaggerated or out of place and quiet diplomacy has not worked. The last piece in the puzzle is the Johannesburg based media who gloss over the rotten state of rugby and talk the team up every year before major competitions. How much longer will they be deflected by decoy runners sent out by the Lions administration media spin.

The illusion that the media help the administration to build each year is that something has changed when all that happens is that the administration tinkers with bits and pieces and makes yet another mess. The Lions used to be in the same boat as the Bulls at the bottom of the jukskei river but now languish on their own.

About time for a change.