Bullard: Shame on White

Shame on White for snubbing the vast pool of black rugby talent

Some things never change. Way back in 1998 I wrote about the government’s paranoia about transformation in sport and commented that perhaps other countries would eventually follow our shining example.

Maybe the Harlem Globetrotters would start hiring short, fat white men to better reflect the demographics and preferred body shape of the average American. It hasn’t happened yet and for good reason.

Watching a wheezing Danny de Vito lookalike running around a basketball court doesn’t make for good TV and, besides, small, fat white men can’t shoot baskets nearly as well as tall, athletic black men. As far as I am aware nobody in the US complains about this. Down here on the southern tip we like to do things differently, though.

I should have thought that our recent rugby World Cup victory would have sent a clear message to the political meddlers; if you select the best men for the job, irrespective of colour, then you will have a winning team.

Apparently this is not enough. While our fickle politicians were quite happy to slip on green Springbok jerseys and bask in the reflected glory of the winning national side, they were secretly seething that Jake White had deliberately ignored the enormous pool of black rugby talent in favour of men with Dutch-and English-sounding names.

So now we need to get more blacks into rugby, irrespective of whether they deserve a place in the team.
Our future squad must apparently reflect the demographics of the country come hell or high water.
That’s all very well if black people want to play rugby, but suppose the supply of good black players doesn’t meet the demand.

What does the government propose to do? Send press gangs into the informal settlements and persuade skinny black youths to climb down from the top of moving trains and take up the relatively safe game of rugby?

Let’s suppose for a moment that the government is right and that there are tens of thousands of frustrated aspirant black rugby players who simply haven’t been given a chance to showcase their talents because of the game’s alleged racial bias.

Let’s further suppose that the time comes to select a national team and the selectors still opt for large white men because they think they might be better in the scrum and the line-out.
Will some nosy politician interfere and give them the Henry Ford response: you can have any colour you like so long as it’s black? What then will be the point of whites playing rugby? Why even have selectors if the ultimate decision comes down to some government lackey?

A solution has already been offered and that is to develop black and white rugby separately. Since the argument is all about race anyway I can’t see how anyone could object to this. Then the all-whites could play the all-blacks and the best players could make up the national side. Unless, of course, the all-whites proved the stronger side in which case we would have to select from the surviving members of the all-black team.

The common-sense solution is to select the best but you can’t expect our politicians to understand the concept of excellence. They are hardly the crème de la crème, are they?

NVDL: It does make sense to select the best, but when was our government (or any other for that matter) ever accused of using common sense?