Import a coach to solve SA rugby’s race riddle

SO, the Springboks are in England, preparing to take on the mighty Japanese on Saturday to start their Rugby World Cup campaign. I wish them nothing but the best. On a good day they could beat any opponent. I don’t like knockout sport, so I don’t really care whether or not they win.

But most of the players are just kids and we place a huge burden on their shoulders. The Springboks have the extra burden of our crippled politics to carry.

The race debate about the Springboks flaring, typically, just before they begin their campaign is ill-informed and destructive. But it is also necessary. The moment they return we should begin it again, recognising the difference between what is possible and what is not.

It is not possible, as South African Rugby Union boss Oregan Hoskins correctly argues, for a Springbok team to reflect the national demographic. That is because the whole country doesn’t play rugby. So can we agree that, at best, the national rugby team should reflect the racial mix of the population that actually plays the game? Is that OK?

Then, can someone please count the number of schools in the country with the facilities: rugby fields and the wherewithal to maintain them; kit; teachers who can coach; credible competition nearby against whom regular matches can be arranged; and transport to get players to away games.

On both scores above, millions of young black boys will be excluded. Hoskins estimates that in the most heavily populated province, KwaZuluNatal, 97% of school boys never get to play rugby. Even if at primary school level 10% of African boys get to touch a rugby ball, that percentage has dwindled to almost nothing by matric and the First XV level.

So let’s also agree that, if you haven’t played rugby at a school with a decent level of facilities and coaches, you are nowhere. And let’s agree that the state needs to ensure that rugby reaches more back kids in a meaningful way. The more people who play rugby in South Africa, the more secure the game will be. Rural schools need rugby fields, mowers, paint for the lines and teachers who can coach.

An ideal solution would be 50 elite new rural boarding schools where teachers and pupils live and play and learn (and eat), without having to schlep home early every day and arrive late the next morning.

But there’s still a real transformation debate to be had when the Springboks come home.

It is about that tiny subset of black rugby players who by some miracle get good enough to play international rugby. What about them? How do they become Springboks? And how do they get to start test matches rather than end them off as substitutes?

It’s complicated, but if you think the race of the person picking the team doesn’t matter you’re just wrong.

I know Heyneke Meyer is passionate about his country and his team. But he’s also a white South African man and, like all of us white men, he’ll have his prejudices.

He may have told himself that choosing Morné Steyn over Elton Jantjies was just a normal rugby decision. But in South Africa it can’t be that simple. Not yet. Apartheid damaged black people. You can tell that by some of our politics. If you don’t think it damaged white people too, you’re living in the Twilight Zone.

That’s why the most transformative thing that could happen to Springbok rugby after the World Cup is the appointment of a non-South African as the national coach. Mncedisi Filtane, a member of the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport, said the same thing in this paper last week.

A Springbok coach can’t alter our facts. But he can make a real difference in the margin. We need someone we can trust not to have an ingrained South African response to a situation. Someone to teach us exciting rugby, without a bias on race or province.

John Eales, who captained the Australian side that won the 1999 World Cup, was once asked which country he’d most like to coach and he answered without any delay: “South Africa.” The country had a depth of talent, he said, you couldn’t find anywhere else.

If he could see it from Australia, imagine how obvious it would be from Table Mountain.