Former Springbok Joel Stransky believes South Africa's failed bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup is down to scoring poorly outside of the given criteria.
Instead, it was France who won the right to stage the prestigious tournament, despite South Africa being the recommended location of World Rugby's leadership and expert opinion in a 15 month-long process.
Speaking to Brendan Telfer on RadioLIVE, Stransky admitted to being disappointed with the outcome, but can see why the decision ultimately did not go in their favour.
"When we properly analyse it and look a little bit deeper there, there are maybe one or two factors that contributed to that, that are not measured in the way the scoring system was depicted," he said.
"The perception of crime in this country, the perception of some of the political issues we deal with, from the corruption and state capture.
"The fact we had drama in Zimbabwe, a coup the morning of the vote - you don't think those were also factors that quite possibly contributed?
"We didn't take into account the fact that as much as the recommendation was there, we still needed to lobby and work behind the scenes to secure the vote."
Money seems to have also been a deciding factor, and with South Africa's deteriorating currency, it was always going to be an uphill battle against the French.
The former World Cup winning first-five admitted they just could not compete financially with France's bid.
"We have currency that is weak, and the French bid was incredibly strong from the financial point of view," Stransky said.
"It was a lot more, in rand terms, over a billion rand, which I would guess is somewhere around €100,000,000 (NZ $172,946,655).
"It is a proper chunk of money, and yes, I think it was a massive factor."
South Africa has not hosted the Rugby World Cup since 1995, where Stransky famously kicked the Springboks to victory over the All Blacks in the final, and the 50-year-old is now pondering what might have been.
"It's a massive loss for our country from a revenue generation, from an opportunity to build spirit and build unity and of course, from a rugby perspective, it's not a good signal."
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