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Jake White on SA rugby

Bruce_ma_goose, given what the liberal media (no conspiracy theories!) pushes I can understand why people might think the situation in SA is as cut and dry as that drone footage shows. White = rich and Black = poor. However it's not, and the irony is that the liberals end up taking up essentially racist stances and assumptions. Like why are they overlooking the large ethnic Indian population in SA? Which is about the size of the white population. I really do find it fascinating how that huge portion of SA's demographic never gets a mention. Why is that if the whole point of quotas is to correct the wrongs of the past and represent the demographic of the country?

In SA the black middle class is more than double the size of the white middle class. Those nice houses in that drone footage would have had white, Indian and black families in them. The shacks would have had 99% to 100% black families in them.

Rugby in SA is not a private school thing. Most public schools in a town or city would have a rugby team. These schools have majority black students. When I was at a public high school that had an A, B and (god bless them) C side. In my class of 37 students maybe 8 of us were white. Roughly 80% of the white boys would play rugby and 80% of the black boys wouldn't play rugby. They wanted to play soccer instead. The soccer teams would often have a token white guy.

It's really that simple. The majority of black people prefer soccer and the majority of white people prefer rugby, and Indians don't care about either really. Nobody is being excluded it's just preference at this stage, whatever the reason. Is the contributing factor because of the past? Without a doubt yes. But those barriers are no longer present and that's the point. Why aren't the government subsidising black people to go watch rugby matches if transformation is so important to them?
 
When problems that aren't really issues are adressed, actual problems are born and nurtured
 
I'll wade into this discussion from the perspective of someone who generally favours political interference to advance social mobility


aha

if the national side is filled with white men, there are a lack of role models for non-white kids. It is then not surprising that non-white kids will massively favour football over rugby. It is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why is that?

I loved cuban wrestlers or japanese judokas back when I took up both sports

Every kid on the planet cheered Jonah Lomu smashing and trashing white dressed englishmen

Every kid on the planet loved Michal Jordan back in the 90s, that's why they made Nike even wealthier

You don't have a point here unless you are impliying SA black kids are so racist that they can't take cool guys like De Villiers, Hougaard or Vermeulen as role models. Or thugs like Etzebeth, a superb lock, a battering ram angry with the world that doesn't take **** from anyone...He rather delivers it to others :D
 
Why is that?

I loved cuban wrestlers or japanese judokas back when I took up both sports

Every kid on the planet cheered Jonah Lomu smashing and trashing white dressed englishmen

Every kid on the planet loved Michal Jordan back in the 90s, that's why they made Nike even wealthier

You don't have a point here unless you are impliying SA black kids are so racist that they can't take cool guys like De Villiers, Hougaard or Vermeulen as role models. Or thugs like Etzebeth, a superb lock, a battering ram angry with the world that doesn't take **** from anyone...He rather delivers it to others :D

I responded to this point in point a), post #24. There is nothing racist about it. Happy to discuss further.
 
Bruce_ma_goose, given what the liberal media (no conspiracy theories!) pushes I can understand why people might think the situation in SA is as cut and dry as that drone footage shows. White = rich and Black = poor. However it's not, and the irony is that the liberals end up taking up essentially racist stances and assumptions. Like why are they overlooking the large ethnic Indian population in SA? Which is about the size of the white population. I really do find it fascinating how that huge portion of SA's demographic never gets a mention. Why is that if the whole point of quotas is to correct the wrongs of the past and represent the demographic of the country?

In SA the black middle class is more than double the size of the white middle class. Those nice houses in that drone footage would have had white, Indian and black families in them. The shacks would have had 99% to 100% black families in them.

Its nothing to do with the media (liberal or otherwise, if you read all my posts you'll see I'm no fan of UK state media). It's to do with cold hard facts. The average earnings of a black person are one sixth of the average earnings of a white person, decades on from the end of apartheid.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...acial-income-inequality-persists-census-shows

For comparison for those in a western economy, the UK average income is approximately £30,000 per annum. One sixth of that is £5,000. An old age pensioner, who is not working in the UK, will earn more than that (up to £6,000 per annum for basic state pension). There is nowhere near that level of wealth inequality in any other significant rugby playing nation. Clearly I am not comparing like with like, and yes, there will be whites in SA living in poverty, potentially extreme poverty. And yes, the UK is a massive contributor to this disparity.


Rugby in SA is not a private school thing. Most public schools in a town or city would have a rugby team. These schools have majority black students. When I was at a public high school that had an A, B and (god bless them) C side. In my class of 37 students maybe 8 of us were white. Roughly 80% of the white boys would play rugby and 80% of the black boys wouldn't play rugby. They wanted to play soccer instead. The soccer teams would often have a token white guy.

I'm happy to bow to your superior knowledge of private schools' influence / control over rugby in SA, but I have read remarks from South Africans that ring very similar to those in Scotland (and also in Australia in this forum) that rugby is a also private school thing in SA and that this has limited the spread of the sport and the ability to identify top talent at young ages.

I also don't buy the argument that black South Africans aren't interested in rugby or don't have the physical attributes in their genetic makeup. The SA 7s side has lots of blacks, Kenyans play and love 7s, the sport is spreading into nations like Mozambique, Uganda etc. Yes, it isn't XVs, but it is still kids playing with a rugby ball. XVs are spreading globally across many ethnic and national groups, Africa, Europe, South America, Asian. All places that also play football I might add. If they can juggle football and rugby I see no reason why non-white South Africa can't.

I do think you make a lot of very valid arguments about why take-up of rugby by non-whites in South Africa is low though. And yes, it's a fair point on ethnic asians, but they come under the "non-white" banner and yes rugby in many countries still awaits its counterpart of an Amla or a Moeen Ali.

The best arguments in this thread to me have been your point on the burgeoning black middle class in SA (which might helps solve some of the issues), and also the example given by Heineken of a sort of high profile community outreach program that went into black communities and received a cold shoulder, possibly due to ignorance or suspicion. I fully accept that racism comes in all shapes and sizes, including black South Africa. I just don't accept that it is the main driver behind suggestions of a quota system.

Anyway, re-reading the OP, it seems Mr White didn't actually mention quotas and he appears to allude to there being a whole bunch of other reasons for the potential "decline" of SA rugby (down to the dark depths of... fourth in the world, Super Rugby runners up and RWC semi-finalists :p ). This is another topic that has veered off topic given the quota issue, so I've taken the liberty of setting up another thread for any more focussed discussions on that topic.
 
I'm not trying to make you bow to anything. I'm just highlighting the complexity and other factors that seem to be missed. Political and socioeconomic debates solve as much as a religious debates. Nothing, as people almost never change their stance.

Africa is the same as the middle east in the fact that a Western driven political models doesn't remedy mismatches like the average income difference.
I firmly believe that even if apartheid never existed most blacks would still earn less than whites on average. Sub-Shara Africa as a whole is playing a massive game of catch up and the rural areas in South Africa is no different.

Centuries worth of cultural norms that directly conflict with modern economic models. Case in point is the polygamist Zulu culture, South Africa's largest tribe. Case in point is the President of South Africa. President Zuma has 4 (current) wives and 20 children that he knows of. When he jets around the world he normally takes 2 of them (squad rotation). I can confirm that this is not only the presidential privilege. I grew up in an area called Zululand where 95% of the population is Zulu. Not every Zulu follows this lifestyle probably due to Christianity and adopting Western norms but it's not uncommon at all. I knew a guy that worked for my grandfather who was a workshop labourer who had 3 wives and 15 children as far as I know. All things equal, Zulus could and will never be on par with average white earnings. It's economically impossible. The fact that they were EXCLUDED whilst whites continued to march to supremacy has exacerbated this already unequal statistic.

Cherry picking stats for SA will sway either stance in the extreme as it's such a unique country
 
Whoa- this has gone way off topic.
@bruce ma goose
White does make subtle reference to the effect of quotas:-

“That’s a worrying sign because whatever is happening now, there’s no doubt it will impact where we will be in the next five years. There are a lot of factors â€" overseas players, spreading the talent base â€" but I don’t think people want to admit that the consequences are going to come back to bite us.â€

And.....

“What I’m saying is that there’s a glaring obvious flaw in what you see. There’s no succession plan. When the Bok coach packs his bags and leaves, he doesn’t leave anything for the next guy. Heyneke never rested a player, never rotated his team, he knew that he needed to get results. You can’t blame him for that, that’s the nature of the job.

Regarding schools rugby - it is not the exclusive privilege of private schools - it is played across state schools however the quality of rugby played by these schools has dropped dramatically over the last 20 years.

Point in case - I attended a state school with a proud history of rugby in the eastern cape. We were always up there with the best - getting players into craven week and SA schools every year.

Today the racial makeup of that school is 80% students of colour and their rugby is absolutely nowhere - we haven't had a single player selected for craven week in 8 years - those days are over - however soccer is flying - This is quite typical of many schools in the area.

It is the private schools in the new South Africa that have tried to preserve the quality of rugby at school level otherwise this too would have perished.

There is right way and a wrong way to implement social mobility across all spectrums of life. The political power in SA has elected to place racially based selection policies on the national side but in typical fashion had no plan to provide the funding for education at grass roots level to ensure continuity of talent in future generations.

It's taken exactly one generation to seriously erode the talent base in SA rugby and it is finally paying the price. Be mindful - this recent epiphany is only the start - you can expect to see the erosion accelerate before it levels out to one of abject humiliation.
 
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I attended a state school with a proud history of rugby in the eastern cape. We were always up there with the best - getting players into craven week and SA schools every year.

Today the racial makeup of that school is 80% students of colour and their rugby is absolutely nowhere - we haven't had a single player selected for craven week in 8 years - those days are over - however soccer is flying - This is quite typical of many schools in the area.

Dale? Queens?
 
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I'm happy to bow to your superior knowledge of private schools' influence / control over rugby in SA, but I have read remarks from South Africans that ring very similar to those in Scotland (and also in Australia in this forum) that rugby is a also private school thing in SA and that this has limited the spread of the sport and the ability to identify top talent at young ages.

Just want to make a correction on that point. In general, private schools in South Africa are quite rubbish at rugby in South Africa. There is maybe one in each big town that may have a good team (Bishops in the WC, Hilton and Michaelhouse in KZN and Saint Andrews in Grahamstown). But the best schools at rugby are generally a form of public school, or former model c's. They are government schools but have additional fees to provide a bit more. These include schools like Paarl Boys, Paarl Gym, Paul Roos, Waterkloof, Outenequa (sorry, I am sure I butchered that), Grey PE, Grey College,Tygerberg, Glenwood, Wynberg, SACS and Rondebosch to name a few.

The only schools that you could try to seperate from these is pure government schools, which are free. Unfortunately these schools are incredibly underfunded with one teacher to 50 students in some cases. It's a lot harder to get rugby into these schools when the traditional sport is often football, a game that is a lot easier to just pick up and play, than rugby, a game that requires a bit more infrastructure and has a higher injury rate. Personally, I don't think SARU is doing enough anyway to get rugby into these schools and regions.
 
Just want to make a correction on that point. In general, private schools in South Africa are quite rubbish at rugby in South Africa. There is maybe one in each big town that may have a good team (Bishops in the WC, Hilton and Michaelhouse in KZN and Saint Andrews in Grahamstown). But the best schools at rugby are generally a form of public school, or former model c's. They are government schools but have additional fees to provide a bit more. These include schools like Paarl Boys, Paarl Gym, Paul Roos, Waterkloof, Outenequa (sorry, I am sure I butchered that), Grey PE, Grey College,Tygerberg, Glenwood, Wynberg, SACS and Rondebosch to name a few.

The only schools that you could try to seperate from these is pure government schools, which are free. Unfortunately these schools are incredibly underfunded with one teacher to 50 students in some cases. It's a lot harder to get rugby into these schools when the traditional sport is often football, a game that is a lot easier to just pick up and play, than rugby, a game that requires a bit more infrastructure and has a higher injury rate. Personally, I don't think SARU is doing enough anyway to get rugby into these schools and regions.

Correct!

And let's use the former-transvaal area which is now Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North-West Province. We still have a yearly School tournament which was the old "Directors Trophy", but has since then advanced into a multi-tiered series. Schools (All of them Public/semi-public) are bracketed together based on the amount of kids they have in the school. So we have a group of Makro schools (which is schools with more than 1500 kids) Big Schools (between 1000 and 1500 kids) and so on. In the end there's 4 groups, and schools in lower tiers who outperforms the others in their tier, can apply by form of qualification to enter a higher tier.

The fact is this model works great, as schools with more boys, inevitable has more talented players. But it also provides Schools in the "Platteland" to play against big city schools.

Now I can promise you on any given day, the race quota for every match is 50% and higher.
 
It's because he is seeing the SA senior player exodus that he is motivated to comment on it.

He's is one of the causes of the player exodus!!

When he was Springbok coach, he selected the overseas based players freely, and when he went to Montpellier he poached almost an entire team!

AC doesn't have that luxury, with our latest policy of keeping the SA team local as much as possible.
 
He's is one of the causes of the player exodus!!

And if it wasn't him it would be somebody else.

You can't blame the players for making the most of the opportunities abroad if their prospects at home are reduced because of bias.
 
And if it wasn't him it would be somebody else.

You can't blame the players for making the most of the opportunities abroad if their prospects at home are reduced because of bias.

I'm not, I'm just saying that he was one of the many reasons why more and more players went abroad, as he gave them the comfort of earning the big bucks and still play for the Springboks. IMHO it is the correct way to do things in that Jake always selected players on merit instead of loyalty (well, apart from John Smit).

But now that he's on the other side of the spectrum, he's exploiting it to his advantage, and to SA Rugby's disadvantage.
 
For me the players come of their own free will, and neither Jake or anyone else is poaching or exploiting anyone, and whats more it is not Jake or others who negociate their salaries,the Presidents are the ones who have the final say, they are obviously helped and advised by their coaches but that is normal, if you got your own house in order maybe there would less impact on your National team. Yes of course they earn more money in France and maybe yes they set themselves up for life but that has a lot to do with the value of the Rand and no one can blame France or their rugby clubs for that, it's SA's problem not ours, in France they are nowhere near millionaires living in France. Average salary 15,000/20,000 Euros per month then deduct car, house, living costs and tax +40% and social charges, in France of course you are earning good money but not rolling in it, you only become wealthy on your return to SA. When i hear players saying they could well stay and have a career with the French National team as well as their club i can understand their choices by turning their backs on their own countries. We have 2 in Montpellier who could well go down that road.
 
When i hear players saying they could well stay and have a career with the French National team as well as their club i can understand their choices by turning their backs on their own countries. We have 2 in Montpellier who could well go down that road.

True, but both Paul and Jacques are the last that will be able to do that from their situations. Both of them played U20 rugby for SA, but the law changed in 2014 so that anyone who plays in an U20 tournament for SA from 2014 won't be able to play for any other nation. Paul and Jacques can play for France since they played U20 before the rule change (2012 and 2013 respectively), but any of our best players from now on won't be able to play for other nations (except for the late bloomers who don't get selected for the U20 tournament).
 
True, but both Paul and Jacques are the last that will be able to do that from their situations. Both of them played U20 rugby for SA, but the law changed in 2014 so that anyone who plays in an U20 tournament for SA from 2014 won't be able to play for any other nation. Paul and Jacques can play for France since they played U20 before the rule change (2012 and 2013 respectively), but any of our best players from now on won't be able to play for other nations (except for the late bloomers who don't get selected for the U20 tournament).

Actually, they still have a chance, as that rule is only applicable if they played for the U20's when their opposition is also either a first or second national team of that nation.
 
I said 2 but in fact there are 3 i forgot Viann, he was Capt under 20's. There is also the new JIFF laws which are coming into use over the next few seasons, ( please look them up they are going to cause problems for French clubs) they are a kind off quota system regarding how many French players or players who could be foreign and who have gone through the Academy system (3yrs) and are on the 23 man team sheets for each game, so there will be less importation of SH players in the future as if these new conditions are not applied there will be fines and point deductions which nobody can afford. Obviuosly the new rules do not apply to the guys already playing France.
 
Actually, they still have a chance, as that rule is only applicable if they played for the U20's when their opposition is also either a first or second national team of that nation.

Nope, not even, he just has to be a replacement or substitute in a match. It's a specific rule for the U20 tournaments, if you play for an U20 team, your nation has designated the U20 team as their second team and you are playing against any other team in the U20 six nations or the U20 JRWC (regardless of whether the opponent is designated as the nation's second team), you are locked in and can only play for your nation.
http://www.worldrugby.org/wr-resour.../English/pubData/source/files/Regulation8.pdf
Regulation 8.3(d)

- - - Updated - - -

I said 2 but in fact there are 3 i forgot Viann, he was Capt under 20's. There is also the new JIFF laws which are coming into use over the next few seasons, ( please look them up they are going to cause problems for French clubs) they are a kind off quota system regarding how many French players or players who could be foreign and who have gone through the Academy system (3yrs) and are on the 23 man team sheets for each game, so there will be less importation of SH players in the future as if these new conditions are not applied there will be fines and point deductions which nobody can afford. Obviuosly the new rules do not apply to the guys already playing France.

Yea, I did see that, which makes things a lot more complicated on your side, but a lot better for your national side. (Montpellier may have a bit of trouble adjusting, or am I wrong? Do you have enough players to cover the requirements?). As a result of these new rules we started seeing some scouts for talent at our Craven Week tournament for young talent (which people have mentioned here before).
 
Nope, not even, he just has to be a replacement or substitute in a match. It's a specific rule for the U20 tournaments, if you play for an U20 team, your nation has designated the U20 team as their second team and you are playing against any other team in the U20 six nations or the U20 JRWC (regardless of whether the opponent is designated as the nation's second team), you are locked in and can only play for your nation.
http://www.worldrugby.org/wr-resour.../English/pubData/source/files/Regulation8.pdf
Regulation 8.3(d)

My bad, I missed subsection (d).
 

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