Yup, really interesting

I guess they feel they have to: there isn't a single black player in that SA squad (that means "black" to a South African - as the Guardian article says, "Among the black potentials, only Habana and his fellow winger, the former Cape gang-member JP Pietersen, were deemed worthy of the final cut - and it is also worth mentioning that in old apartheid parlance, Habana and Pietersen are "coloured", rather than black. In South Africa, this has real significance: there are still no players coming from the most oppressed sections of South African society.")

But the inevitable result is that they are going to be s**t for quite a while. Which is a huge pill to swallow.

Like here, the problems is at schools level. In south and east England, almost only private schools play rugby. (In the north and the west country it's a different story, but even there the state schools are handicapped compared to the private schools in terms of facilities and expert staff.) That problem is magnified a billion times in SA

Posted By: Old Git, Oct 16, 13:14:39