A great deal — and space for Bokke in back

There’s a guy who lives in my neighbourhood in Cape Town who has erected two flagpoles in his garden. These, most of the time, fly the New Zealand All Blacks flag. Support for the All Blacks in Cape Town is a long-established oddity (inevitability, some might say) borne out of the awfulness of the past.

But then, the other day, he went out and bought two Japanese flags, and he raised them too. This, as they say on social media, was simply top-level trolling of Springbok fans. After all, in case you were hiding under a rock, the Springboks managed to lose to Japan in their opening Rugby World Cup game in Brighton, England.

Sport in this country has always been interesting, and to be honest, it really is perfectly okay by me if people support the All Blacks, or England, or whoever takes their fancy. I hear on the grapevine that there are people out there who still support Arsenal. It takes all types.

What I genuinely do not understand is people who get so terribly upset by this kind of thing. I understand the historical reasons behind support for the All Blacks and I continue to understand why some folk still don’t support the Springboks. It doesn’t seem complicated. I got into trouble years ago when I supported a fellow columnist in The Times after he wrote that he didn’t really feel the Boks represented him. To me at the time it seemed pretty obvious why he felt that way. If anything, under the current Bok regime, things seem to be worse.

I know that the call for merit in selection of sports teams is met with groans by those people who translate the idea of “merited” team selection by white people as meaning a mainly white team.

But of course we should pick the best team. It’s just that there are two points here. One is that with my admittedly not gigantic rugby knowledge I don’t think Heyneke Meyer has picked the best team. Second, I don’t understand why we’re not pursuing an affirmative action approach to rugby, which is to say that you pick the best team, but in the case where a black and white player are the same or as near-as-dammit in their abilities, you run with the black guy.

How is that not an investment in the future of Springbok rugby? It just seems so blindingly obvious to me that if the sport is to thrive, black kids in schools need to see a future in the sport.

IJUST don’t understand the fear and the anger about all of this. What’s at risk is the very idea of the Springboks. And for existing Springbok fans, that would seem to be quite serious. It is to me vital that we attract more black fans and players to the spectacular show that is Springbok rugby. Anybody who gets worked up about other people’s identity, in my book, needs to collect their National Socialist tendencies at the door and bugger off. Those of the “whites can’t be African” school are as egregious as the “blacks must support the Boks” intellectual thugs. They’re all as hateful as each other.

To me it’s clear that the guy in Cape Town with his flags that protest so much more than just rugby has an entirely reasonable point of view. It’s no skin off my nose whatever he chooses to do, but if Springbok rugby can attract people like him, then the Boks will really be winning.

So, let’s get a foreign coach, somebody who can see excellence with clarity, and somebody who understands the need for change.

I often ask foreigners for their view on SA, mainly because they tend not to be distracted by our local noise. A rugby-mad English friend tells me by e-mail that Japan were simply excellent last weekend, but also mentions that the Boks looked old, slow and unimaginative. “What’s going on down there?” he