Apologies for the very slow reply. I'd typed one up early in the week and found out that if your smartphone battery runs out before you submit a post, it doesn't remember anything you've typed. I've only just mustered the enthusiasm to start from scratch.
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Regardless of any nuances in differences between private (fee paying) and state schools in South African and Scotland, I think we can agree that there will be a core number of schools that will have the strongest rugby programmes, and that overwhelmingly, if you are a pupil in one of these schools you stand a far, far stronger chance of getting the necessary specialist training required to ultimately become a Springbok. My school (slightly above average state school) also had a rugby team, but it was just coached by generic, jack-of-all-trade teachers, who had no apparent knowledge of the basics of the game in terms of rules, tactics, positional awareness or technique and certainly no background in the sport. You could have dropped Beauden Barrett into my school and I could almost guarantee you his talent would not have been identified and he'd never have become an international rugby player (XVs). The popular argument on internet forums is that in such circumstances Beauden Barrett wouldn't "merit" becoming an international rugby player, whereas the reality would be that he'd been denied sufficient tools to compete with kids from other rugby programmes (e.g. with a specialist rugby coach).
Sevens and football are very simple sports. Cream can rise to the top regardless of where it comes from and the quality of that training in school (e.g. Weah from Liberia or Salah (?) from Egypt in football, or the Kenyan & US 7s sides). On the other hand Cricket and XVs are heavily technical and without the necessary guidance I'd argue that the greatest of talents simply won't have the opportunity to make the grade. The disparity between the Kenyan & US 7s and XVs is probably a simple example of this.
"Disgusted" is not a word I'd use given my lack of knowledge about the schools in question. "Disappointed" and "concerned" are probably more my choice, particularly if these schools are the ones that produce the majority of Boks. It's basically a sign that the Boks could be back at square one 35+ years after the end of apartheid.
As I've said before, even when I believed the SA government and SARU that there weren't quotas in effect (merely targets) I considered that quotas was better than doing nothing. A lot of these arguments can be found in the "catch-all" thread, so instead of regurgitating that I'll throw something knew out there to explain my perspective.
At RWC 2015, the Boks played an average of 3.5 players classified as black or coloured in their four games against Tier 1 opponents (4, 4, 3 & 3). Without quotas its reasonable to assume that would be a fairly similar figure of 3 or 4 non-white South Africans in the Bok 23 in the last year or two.
Next month England will tour South Africa. A full strength England would definitely have 3 black home grown players in the 23 (Joseph, Watson & Itoje) and possibly a fourth (Sinckler). Heck, they might even be selecting a bi-sexual fly half (becoming the true "rainbow nation" of rugby!
)
The "black" population of England (i.e. black or mixed race partial black) is
3% of the population. The comparable figure in South Africa is about
85%.
Wales (Charvis, Giles), Ireland (Zebo), Italy (Mbanda, Odiete) all manage to identify the occasional black player despite the tiny fraction of their populations that are black (far, far smaller than even the 3% of England) and intense competition with other sports.
I personally found it weird watching such a white Boks side in 2015. I didn't understand what I was seeing 20 years on from the advent of democracy. To me the only explanations are that:
i) The schools system and the union (and to some extent the government) have not done enough to expose non-white kids to elite rugby training programmes.
(my most likely explanation given my personal comparison with Scotland and how I think this is possible to recreate without ill intent)
OR
ii) Rugby culture in top schools and/or clubs is a bastion of some of the last vestiges of South African racism and the focus on white kids is intentional
(I can't comment on that, and consider it less likely than i). The sense I get from this forum is that almost all posters genuinely don't give a fig about the colour of the player, as long as they outplay their opponent)
Some of the counter arguments/explanations I've read here I don't find remotely persuasive. For example:
iii) black kids in SA prefer football
(Italy and England are arguably the two of the biggest hotbeds of football in the world, yet they can find black kids to excel at XVs rugby).
iv) black kids in SA don't enjoy the physical contact of rugby that comes with XVs
(why are black kids in SA different to black kids elsewhere in England or the US?)
I'm all ears for any other explanation for why a country with 3% of its population being black can select the same number of black players (on merit) as a country where 85% of the population is black.
I'm not looking to guilt trip South Africans and I accept there are sustained failings in the post reconciliation government and they have to shoulder some responsibility - they have been complacent and shown a lack of foresight, squandering the opportunity of governing the country for a solid 20+ years. But the Boks are perhaps the single biggest emblem of South Africa that it shows to the world. The RWC of 1995 was rightly celebrated globally as a sign of a new beginning. But when 20 years later you can't even muster a handful of black players in your starting 23 it sends an unflattering message to the international rugby community and casts doubts on the progress of the Rainbow nation in becoming a coherent society.
That is why I consider a measure as invasive as quotas being better than nothing after 20 years of what I consider to be failure. Life is bigger than rugby.
Scotland (and Australia by the sounds of things) can mess up and only properly train kids from the same tiny incestuous network of schools and nobody bats an eyelid – just the occasional grump like myself who is passionate about social mobility and expanding the reach of the sport. The same level of incompetence in South Africa gets judged far more harshly because of the history of that country. That might not be fair, but it's the way it is.
I totally take on board that it can very well be the case that black individuals in positions of authority at schools and in government can also have taken decisions that have reduced the ability of black kids to get access to top tier training at school. Like I say, I blame general complacency and ineffectiveness across the board rather than anything underhand. Cultivating and maintaining XVs rugby takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. That's why nobody steps up to become a new Tier 1 nation.
In terms of that song you keep referencing, I don't think it is appropriate to conflate that with transformation. The UK national anthem contains the line "rebellious Scots to crush" but I'm not going to denounce anyone in the government who sings it or denounce the policies of parties that sing it. It's just an old song with an unfortunate line that was probably a bit dubious when it was written and hasn't aged well. If this ANC song is from the apartheid era then I'd imagine something similar will apply. If it's a new song with a Macarena like dance craze then I will share you displeasure.
