Saru’s transformation plan not close to perfect
IN 2006 OREGAN Hoskins was elected to the Saru presidency against a backdrop of hope that the thorny issue of rugby transformation would finally be addressed.
Ahead of the 2007 World Cup, Hoskins said: “We, as the game’s leadership, must take charge of transformation. There can be no turning back on our commitment to change. We are not forcing the national coach to pick seven or eight black players in 2008. It is a target we believe can be achieved by the next World Cup (2011) and that every player in the starting XV is there on merit.”
We’re now a month out from the 2015 World Cup and having the same discussions. Given the promises that have been made and the timelines that were set down as part of the election drive, one has to say that we’re no closer to the “ideal” than we were seven years ago.
The subject is controversial and emotive. And discussion around transformation usually splits parties on racial lines.
Apart from the lack of delivery from Saru – when one compares 2015 to what was envisaged in 2007 – one has to admit that national coach Heyneke Meyer does himself no favours when it comes to his selections.
A month out from the World Cup he doesn’t know what his best run-on XV is, and defeat to Argentina in Durban last week was the nadir of his four years at the helm. What happened next? He was awarded a new four-year contract taking him to 2019, though I’d like to find a bookie who’ll give me odds that he lasts until 2019.
Last week Meyer selected Jesse Kriel at wing against Argentina. He is an exciting talent, but he’s a centre, not a wing, and was pushed across to accommodate the returning captain, Jean de Villiers.
Meyer keeps missing a trick by not selecting Seabelo Senatla. The 22-year-old is a Commonwealth Games (Sevens) gold medallist from 2014, where the BlitsBoks beat New Zealand in the final. He has looked at home in Currie Cup and Super Rugby, and has what every wing needs: raw pace.
He’s also a charismatic, photogenic, confident young man and a marketing dream. Yet, he was overlooked at the expense of a specialist centre.
This week Meyer pushed Kriel back to centre after De Villiers got injured and he included Lwazi Mvovo at No 14. Why didn’t he do that at Kriel’s expense against Argentina if he rates Mvovo as a Bok wing?
This week Meyer also sent Scarra Ntubeni home from the Bok squad “to get game time in the Currie Cup”. Yet, Meyer had no issue with rushing his captain back into the Bok starting XV after De Villiers had been out for a protracted period following more knee surgery. Why did he not suggest De Villiers first “got game time” in the Currie Cup?
You can see how he opens himself up to criticism.
No one suggests there is an easy transformation blueprint, otherwise it would have been trotted out many years ago and Hoskins would have “seven or eight black players” in his squad – and we’d have moved away from appeasing the critics by “sticking the black players on the wing”, though, in Senatla’s case he can be one of the better No 11s in the game.
My views on transforma- tion have changed in recent years. There’s much opinion which says it must be from the “bottom up”, starting at schools level. If that’s the case, where in the schools system?
Do you tell an under-8 kid that he has been moved from the “B” side to the “C” side because a black classmate of his has been preferred on the basis of his skin colour?
And take that through the age groups? Tell a 12-year-old white boy that he has not been selected because of his skin colour and I’m sure the youngster who has been picked ahead of him will endure plenty of mental bullying at the school.
The white kid will have told his dad, who would have bemoaned quotas and suddenly the black rugby 12-year-old becomes a target at school.
Kids of that age aren’t emotionally mature enough to know what transformation means, and the collateral damage that it can bring. If quotas are to be enforced, then I believe it should come between schoolboy and club level.
And it’s not as if there’s a dearth of black talent at Craven Week. Many provinces have a high ratio of black players in their starting XVs, so there is talent coming through the system.
From there on it becomes a question as to why that talent doesn’t seep into the higher structures, club rugby, Varsity rugby, Vodacom Cup, Currie Cup and Super Rugby.
The only hope I have is that we’re not having this same conversation in 2019, because we’ve had 20 years of it.