Have the selection goal posts moved?

 

The coaching staff of the Eastern Province Grant Khomo Week team were being a little disingenuous when they threatened to resign, en masse, over the changes made by the EP Rugby Union to the team that was selected after the trials process.

I’ve read since that they have agreed to stay on – in the interests of the players – which is admirable, but they knew when they accepted their appointments that the team they would be coaching would not be a merit-selected one, teams going to the SA Rugby youth weeks haven’t been chosen that way for decades now.

No-one is saying that they don’t have a point, but demanding that representative teams be chosen on merit is not helpful in our system.

There’s a quota in place of at least 12 players of colour in every 23-player squad. There’s nothing in what I’ve read about the matter suggesting that this was not met in this case. But, it seems the union was not happy with how it was met. EP President George Malgas, in his response, referred to the team as not being “representative of EP’s demographics.”

His complaint was that the players put forward came from a handful of schools from the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, and two schools from Makhanda. “We were not happy to accept this list. It had not made any provision for players from the previously disadvantaged areas,” he is quoted in SA Rugby Magazine as saying.

That’s new, and if it is the way that the senior provincial federations are going to see things, then the model currently in use no longer applies. What’s happening in EP, clearly, is that talented black players have been recruited by the good rugby schools in PE, and in Grahamstown, where they get the coaching and exposure and end up (very often on merit) in the provincial system. They wouldn’t do that if they stayed at schools in the rural and township areas they came from – would Siya Kolisi have eventually captained the Springboks if he didn’t go to Grey High School?

And that’s what’s happening everywhere in the country. SA Rugby has handed its responsibility for transformation over to the schools. Is Mr Malgas going to ensure that proper talented player development takes place in the areas that he describes as “disadvantaged and rural communities (that) are systematically deprived of opportunities.”

If he is, and if SA Rugby funds and rolls out similar programmes in all the provinces, if transformation, in other words, moves from counting the number of black faces in team photos to real grassroots development, that would be great. And, in time, players who remain in those areas and don’t get bursaries to the traditional rugby schools will be included in the selected teams.

The cricket people have been doing it. CSA runs a Hub development programme in disadvantaged areas and players are coming through. The 2025 captain of the South African Schools team, Emathi Kitshini, is from Thembalethu High School in George, the first player from the Hub development program to captain the elite SA Schools side.

So, it can be done. But will SA Rugby go that way any time soon?