The Language of Rugby

Tomorrow the South African national team plays their fiercest rivals the All Blacks of New Zealand. South Africaare the rugby world champions while the New Zealanders feel they should be. They feel that they were let down badly by their administrators and coaching staff. The players feel they let the nation down and would like nothing better that to redeem themselves and beat the Springboks.

In South Africa it would be fair to say that rugby fans enjoy their rugby. This is not an unequivocal statement and it can be constantly tested. When our sides play well we support, are interested and loyal, but interest and loyalty are a fragile thing. It is affected by a number of thing, losses, our affinity to the coach, the players and the administrators.

In further explanation one needs to understand a little about our rugby history. We are great supporters of our provinces. In the apartheid years South Africa did not play international sport and so the provincial contests became increasingly serious. They still are life and death affairs like you find in derby soccer matches in England. In international matches whether we win or loose this provincialism comes into play. We boast of our provinces players if we are winning and blame other provinces players if we are loosing.

In post apartheid South Africa the Government requires all sports specifically those played predominantly by whites to uplift people from disadvantaged backgrounds and bring them into the mainstream of our sporting codes. That a number of sporting codes who, if tested against business criteria, have failed miserably is an on going fact of life. Rugby while there are very talented players of colour in provincial and Springbok teams is one of those codes. They certainly have no depth in talent amongst players of color and very few African blacks make it through into the better teams. Here again is a blame or boast factor. When winning we are getting transformation of the sport right. When losing it’s because of the transformation.

Back to the game tomorrow. The new South African coach, Pieter De Villiers, is untested against the All Blacks. He is an unpopular choice amongst the supporters of the northern provinceswho expected their candidate, Heyneke Meyer to be chosen. The fact that Meyer is now lost to South African rugby and will be coaching in England in the new northern hemisphere season makes it even worse.

The new South African coach is orientated towards the southern provinces. He is also the first national coach of colour. He stands by his choices and has as would be expected preferred players where there is a close contest for a position from southern provinces.

As South Africans we still suffer from an apartheid hangover and we choose our words carefully. We do not want to seem racist when talking about the coach or players of colour. We do however want to feel secure in how we play and winning as world champions is something we feel we have to do at all cost.

When we come out tomorrow the coach and his players face a test that is more than just rugby. As South Africans we face a test hat also is more than just rugby. It is more about who we are and where we want to go than anything else. For me it’s about the language around me. That praise when we win. The sullen cursing when we lose and of course who to blame.