Cape Town - The plan to have black players represent half of every Springbok team by 2019 is a target and not a quota.
This was the key point that came out of the South African Rugby Union’s (Saru) official unveiling of its strategic transformation plan (STP) on Tuesday.
“The STP is a road map,” Saru chief Jurie Roux said. “We have a destination in mind and know there will be short-cuts and at other times we may stray from the path.
“There are no punishments if our targets are not met, but without a structured objective, backed by implementation plans, we would be nowhere.”
This clarifies a leaked report on Saru’s five-year plan printed last September, which claimed that the target of 50 percent representation was a non-negotiable quota.
“We started this new approach in October 2012 with a transformation indaba, since when we have worked very hard and with great determination to deliver a plan to guide our sport all the way to the World Cup in Japan in 2019,” Saru president Oregon Hoskins said.
“Our document is aligned with the government’s national sports plan and is definitely not only about the number of black players on the field.
“It has six focus areas: demographic representation; access to the game; skills and capacity development; performance; community development and social responsibility and corporate governance.
“Within those six dimensions are 71 key performance indicators. For instance, we want to introduce 150 000 new primary school children to the game by 2019; accredit 1 500 new administrators; raise preferential procurement to 40 percent from targeted suppliers; increase the number of women in administration to 40 percent and raise the black representation in our national teams.”
“Transformation is a critical business imperative in South Africa and if we had not taken this new approach to what had been an organic process up until recently, we would have put our sport in peril of becoming marginalised,” added Roux.
“It will unlock untapped talent and has the potential to awaken corporate interest in rugby where it may previously not have existed. The simple facts are that the majority of rugby supporters and players - at schoolboy and club level - in South Africa are black; 84 percent of this country’s under-18s are black African - and we want them in our game in some way.
“Rugby is massively transformed but we know we have challenges: only one in 35 schools in provinces such as KZN, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North West play rugby for example.
“We know that we are only judged on representation in the Springbok team. We’ve spent R500 million on development in rugby since 1992 and can point to significant advances but the Bok team is the only measure on which we are judged.
“We understand that and we also understand that is also unfair to put that pressure on the Springbok coach without offering him any assistance - his teams can only reflect what is going on at the elite end of the domestic game.”
Commenting on the plan, former Springbok and Stormers player Gcobani Bobo said: “I would love to see rugby become the number one sport in the country and we should be doing everything we can to promote rugby for everyone.
“At the moment you have guys that were playing club rugby that are now playing overseas and that is just one of the opportunities that can come from more people playing rugby. I also think that the more players you have out there playing on the field the more the game will improve, which is what we all should be striving for.
“There are a few challenges for black players but for me the main one is the fact that they cannot just wake up and go to a field where they have coaches ready to train them, or they do not have access to a gym. These need to be more tangible for players so that you do not need to come from a rich family or school in order to play rugby.”
Another former Springbok, Tim Dlulane, now an administrator with the Bulls franchise, said making the game accessible to black youth was imperative.
“”Getting more black players into the Springboks should not just be about the numbers but it should also be about making rugby more accessible to these players. For this to happen there needs to be a buy-in from the unions in terms of pushing for transformation.
“A key factor for transformation is to get more qualified coaches in these communities so that they can not only teach them but also provide support. Perhaps a way to achieve that would be for there to be more coaches of colour so that the players can have the support they need in order to succeed.”
Cape Argus