Gosh what a hoo-ha in the media about the racial composition of the Springbok team!
I guess the loss to Argentina by an almost all-white team deserved that sort of response and the debate that followed, while sometimes a little hysterical, it has been interesting and necessary.
Here, for what it’s worth, is how I see it.
In our unhappy past, access to certain activities was barred for much of the population, and public spending on schools and public facilities was allocated to only a very small part of the population.
That can’t be denied, and the legacy of those days is still with us, 21 years later.
It had to be fixed and, all sorts of “sporting experts” – ranging from trade unionists to DA politicians, to University political science professors – tell us, the paucity of black faces in the Springbok team photo shows that it hasn’t been.
I’m not one of those experts, I’m afraid, so I don’t have an expert opinion on how little progress has actually been made, but I do know that the passage of those 21 years were never, on their own, going to make things happen.
The powers-that-be want more black faces in that team pic and there certainly should be. That a team without those faces was walloped doesn’t help the merit-selection argument either.
In the midst of all the nonsense being spewed, a few voices keep on asking: “What is being done to ensure that there are enough black players who have the ability to play at this level coming through the development pipeline?”
And that’s the key question. The only thing I can claim to be an expert on is watching schoolboy rugby matches – I’ve put in my 10000 hours there – and I can tell you that in recent years just about every school first team rugby game features many (sometimes mostly) black players, and most of the time they are the best players on the field.
The same applies at SA Rugby’s Youth Weeks where, because of quota regulations, half of the players are black and very often they are the standout performers on show.
So, where do we go wrong after that? Why do we need Zimbabweans, and players who were schooled at Bishops and King Edward to prove transformation is happening?
The answer, if you believe what has been written in the last two weeks, lies in the conservatism (if not outright racism) of the coaches and selectors at senior rugby levels. And in the unwillingness of the current Springbok coach to give the black players enough game time to prove themselves.
As I said earlier, I don’t have the knowledge to comment on that. I do suspect, however, that rugby at school level is not as popular as we may think. Peer (and official school) pressure keeps the numbers up and the majority of players, white and black, never touch a rugby ball again when their matric season ends.
And even the most talented simply don’t want to go on playing, or find it difficult to stay motivated once they leave the supported environment of the school.
That’s their choice and there’s nothing wrong with it. But like everything else it’s a numbers game and there have to be more players of colour coming through the ranks, especially from the non-traditional schools.
And then, for goodness sake, give those who rise to the top enough game time, and don’t make silly positional changes that – even to non-experts like me – look like they are designed to stop black players in the squad from getting a chance.