Bok management to blame for mess

It is now five years since the Cardiff incident which led to a controversy which many felt killed off any hope of the Springboks winning the World Cup that year.

To refresh memories, the coach Nick Mallett was asked by a journalist (who happened to be yours truly) about the unhappiness back home at the lack of black players in his proposed squad for the match against Wales.

Mallett, having just finished a game of touch rugby, reacted in a huff, saying in no uncertain terms that he would not be dictated to about who to play and who not to play.

The upshot was that the then Sarfu chief executive Rian Oberholzer flew to Cardiff and made his own speech, this time to management and players: Accept the realities of living in South Africa or go find employment elsewhere.

Oberholzer made it clear to me in an interview that never again would there be a "lily white" Springbok team, and it is a fact that for the rest of that year the Boks always had at least one black player in the starting lineup.

Now that we are reaching the end of 2004, it is hard to imagine what went through the minds of coach Jake White, manager Arthob Petersen and whoever else was involved in the initial decision to leave out Breyton Paulse.

White admitted himself at a press conference during the week that he had brought into the concept of transformation when he signed on the dotted line to become Springbok coach. He said he knew the parameters he had to work within, he knew what was expected of him. Having been present at the press conference where he was appointed, I would have to ask White where he thought he could get off picking only one black player, as he intended to do.

All the journalists present that day will remember Sarfu president Brian van Rooyen's confident promise that "Never again while I am in charge will there be just one black player in the Springbok team".

Petersen was there too, so he should also have known the score. As for Van Rooyen, Petersen said he okayed the team without Paulse, but the Sarfu president has come back through the media back home and said that the team he saw did have Paulse in it. Huh?!! Petersen was quite clear in the interview with myself and a few other journalists on Tuesday afternoon that Van Rooyen had given his blessing for the team to take the field with just one black player on the basis that the selection had been made for sound rugby reasons.

But what are sound rugby reasons in our country? When the Bok squad was selected, much was made by the selectors of the fact that a "merit" squad had been selected and it included 11 black players. Are those who accused the Boks of window dressing back then now not thoroughly vindicated by the fact that of the 11 players still with the squad who are not involved at Twickenham, seven are black.

Yes, I listened to Petersen the other day when he told us that it was sound logic to keep the Tri-Nations winning squad together as much as possible. But if continuity was going to be the basis of selection, why did White need to take 33 players, and not the smaller squad of 25 that he initially wanted.

The black players all started this tour with enthusiasm, but as the days have rolled by, so they have looked less and less occupied, and more and more like tourists who are trying to kill boredom. A young player coming along for the experience I can understand, but what is Gcobani Bobo really learning on this trip?

This is not an anti-transformation story. It is pro-transformation. It is time to accept that if you consider a black player good enough to make the squad, then he must be good enough to play. You cannot then turn around, as White did in Cardiff a few weeks ago, and blame a poor finish to a match on there having been a time mix-up which meant the reserves spent too many minutes on the field.

South African rugby people need to understand that transformation is a non-negotiable and that a Springbok coach has to base his selection around more than just whether a player may or may not be tall enough to handle a cross kick. Whatever you think of the political influence on selection, and I take the point of those who point out the England coach doesn't have to present his team to the queen before he announces it, it is a reality.

White knows it, so of course does Petersen. So I repeat my question of earlier: What exactly were they thinking? Fellow journalists and myself were immediately surprised and wasted no time in asking the hard political questions when we saw the team train in Richmond the other day. It was all quite obviously a recipe for much controversy.

The horses for courses policy would hold water if it were not for the perception that while it is common practice to field several black players in matches against lesser nations or in matches of lesser importance, invariably that is narrowed down quite substantially when the crunch arrives.

These are not the sins of White, who has a great transformation record, but perhaps the sins of his predecessors and the coaches of the provincial unions and Super 12 franchises. He knew though that he had a 50 test veteran available to him for the Twickenham test, a man who has not let his country down in the past. It was not a difficult decision for him to make, yet he made the wrong one. The fault for the current mess does not lie at the feet of politicians who reacted like we expected them to, but of a management that took its eye off the ball and forgot the bigger picture.