It's the flag, and it is beloved like nothing else in South Africa. You see it everywhere ... member of the squad and spent more than the first five years of his life in an apartheid state.

It costs more than USD11,000 a year to keep the tallest flag in South Africa in the required state of splendour. Next to the price of fielding first at St George's Park, that's a pittance.

Bahlmann was responding to a question on Business Day TV about South Africa’s competition watchdog ... “So it is definitely a red flag,” he said. “I do worry that if you take that with ...