Archie Henderson: So the Tri-Nations wasn’t as bad as we thought. We might have lost all but one of the six matches against our old enemies and conceded the most tries, but – hell’s bells! – we made a lot of money going about it.

“For every point we conceded against the All Blacks, we made a packet”

The cash rolled in despite some poor performances on the field and yet another gaffe by the coach about supporting a murder suspect “100%”.

Peter de Villiers might have made us cringe and the Boks made us cry, but now for the good news.

A bunch of clever number-crunchers at a place called the Centre for International Business of Sport at Coventry University in England, commissioned by MasterCard, have done the sums and, basically, for every point we conceded against the All Blacks and the Wallabies and for every try we gave away, we made a packet.

When I say “we”, I mean the cities where the matches were played. All the sums have been done in US dollars, but it looks much more impressive in rands, so the total contribution of the Tri-Nations to the “sport and leisure economies” of the host cities came to R1.3-billion.

South Africa on its own made R268-million from the three games here, with Joburg leading the way on R141-million for the FNB stadium Test against the All Blacks.

Pretoria was less than half that at R66-million and Bloemfontein R61.8-million of which a large percentage must have been the bar takings at the Mystic Boer, although the study does not go there.

Oddly, the two Test venues where the Boks were beaten – Johannesburg and Bloem – far outstrip the single win at Loftus: R202.5-million to R66-million. So losing doesn’t appear to affect spending habits. Is this what the economists mean by “deficit spending”?

As impressive as this sounds, it is dwarfed by the Six Nations, which brought in R4.55-billion.

In two years’ time, when the Pumas join the Tri-Nations, the figure is expected to climb to R1.5-billion because, the study says, rugby is growing faster in Argentina than in any of the current member countries.

Reasons for the latest growth is put down to broadcasting and attendance, which is up 50000 to 450000. Apparently this is marginally higher, on average, than the World Cup. The highest single attendance figure was the 94013 at FNB stadium against the All Blacks. It was the highest gate for a South African rugby match in more than 50 years, eclipsing that epic against the British Lions of 1955 at Ellis Park.

What the study doesn’t say, possibly because it has little bearing on the economics of the game, is that there is still a lot wrong with our game. Our defence has gone to pieces, the skipper looks dead on his feet and the coach can’t keep his feet out of his mouth.

It’s fascinating to note the contrast with, say, Australia. One of its leading sportswomen lost all sense of civility with a “suck on that faggots” twitter.

Stephanie Rice was quickly slapped down, losing a Jaguar sponsorship and being forced to make a tearful apology.

Whether it was done because the said faggots objected to being compared with the Springboks is unknown, but it was very different from allowing De Villiers to get off scot-free with his own silliness.

De Villiers is to rugby what Julius Malema is to the ANC, but rugby does not have a Jeremy Cronin, brave enough to stand up to such absurdities.

For all the money that rugby has made this season, a slapdown of Div would have been priceless.