Loose Pass: Spain’s saga, Bath’s plight and Rassie Erasmus’ three-point plan

As Spain’s rugby community ended Thursday with that unmistakeable feeling of ‘oh no, not again’, much of the rest of the rugby world paused for a moment, read the story, shrugged a bit and moved on.

Such is Spain’s standing in the scheme of things. Guillaume Rouet’s heartfelt declaration of dejection and anger that evening would have given more pause for thought, but although Spain’s exclusion from the World Cup is the end of the story for many, for others it is far from it.

The other players in this act, South African prop Gavin van den Berg and his club Alcobendas, are facing all sorts of trouble. Alcobendas had made the final of the Spanish Cup, for example, a final which will now not be played until everything is settled.

More perturbing for club and player is probably the declared intention of the Spanish rugby federation to pass the case of the ‘modified’ passport on to the public prosecutor, with criminal charges potential at the very least.

Spanish federation vice president Jose Maria Epalza told a news conference that Romania had handed World Rugby a photograph of Van den Berg at a wedding in South Africa in 2019, two weeks before he had supposedly left Spain, according to the date in the copy of the player’s passport supplied to the federation.

The federation and the club have insisted Van den Berg himself was not aware of the modification of his passport, although the timing of the wedding and his eligibility windows were in his mind, according to Epalza: “…the player says he was not aware of the falsification but he signed the papers that stated that he was eligible, he knew the days he was in Spain, so it was something he might have known.” Spanish sport daily Marca also said the player had been actively