Conspiracy theories hold no water

It is normal for the announcement of a Springbok team to elicit heated debate, but some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated in the past few days just go beyond the pale.

Since Sunday I have heard supposedly intelligent people talking about conspiracies against the Sharks, the Bulls, white players and players with experience. John Robbie was 100% correct when on Boots and All on Tuesday night he wondered why nobody made a case for other minority groups, such as homosexuals.

Firstly, let’s tackle the gripes of the Sharks. As a born and bred Durbanite, I well remember the days when the old Banana Boys used to labour under the assumption that South African rugby viewed Natal as a separate country. Tommy Bedford, the former Bok captain who was aggrieved at his treatment by the national selectors, took it further by labelling the province the Last Outpost of the British Empire.

Judging from the newspaper headline which appeared on a television news show the other day, not much has changed. The way the newspaper in question chose to deal with the Springbok announcement was to run a banner headline asking the question “Where are the Sharks?”

Now that is a question I would like to ask. Now that we have reached the end of the Super 12 season, where indeed are the Sharks? Was it seventh on a 12 team log? Hardly, I am sure you would agree, enough reason to load the Boks with Sharks players, just as the sixth place attained by the Bulls last year was not sufficient reason for the then coach Rudolf Straeuli to load his team with Bulls.

The All Blacks have at times based their national selection around successful Super 12 teams, but then those have invariably been sides that have dominated the competition. We cannot claim that for any of our Super 12 sides, not even the Stormers.

Where are the Sharks, or rather where were they in the last four weeks of the competition? After scraping to victory against two mediocre Kiwi teams in New Zealand, they lost four home games in a row. Sorry, but if all these players the Kwa-Zulu/Natalians are carping about are so damn good, how did they manage such a pathetic end to their season?

As for the outburst of Craig Davidson, let me say at the outset that here is a player I have always liked, always got on with and always admired and respected as a player with ability. But is he Gareth Edwards? I think not, yet if you read the text of the statements issued to the offices of Natal Newspapers you would assume he thinks he is head and shoulders above all other scrumhalves in the country.

As rugby is not an exact science, there are doubtless some who would disagree, yet it is my impression that most of the scrumhalves in this country are of pretty equal ability.

There really isn’t very much separating Davidson, Bolla Conradie, Neil de Kock and Fourie du Preez. Had Jake White selected any of those four scrumhalves into his starting team I would not have had a problem.

Henno Mentz has been mentioned in this column before as a player of immense raw talent but who is not the finished article. It has long been my belief that until he loses some of his cumbersomeness in fielding the high ball and turning for kicks, he might well end up being exposed by the likes of the All Blacks and Australia. He will be good, but don’t rush him now.

While on the subject of the Natal persecution complex, has it escaped the notice of the people living in that province that they currently boast the Springbok captain, one who is not necessarily deserving of his place on current form. If White hates Natalians, how did he get this one right?

On the subject of hookers, the Bulls fans have a right to be aggrieved about the omission of Gary Botha, and for that matter Christo Bezuidenhout and Richard Bands. But their underachieving Super 12 was hardly deserving of en masse inclusion in the Springbok side and my perception is that the Pretoria team is filled with very good Currie Cup players who battle when asked to step up to a higher level.

Last year the Bulls celebrated their sixth place finish as if they had won the competition. I argued at the time that sixth was not good enough to justify selecting the Bok team around them, and when the likes of Louis Koen did get to play international rugby they were found out.

Now we get to the black/white issue. I would have chosen Gerrie Britz or Selborne Boome ahead of Quinton Davids and as I said, Botha was unlucky, but none of the black players in the squad lack ability. Hanyani Shimange has plenty of potential, of that there is no doubt, and maybe White feels he can make him realise that potential in a way that his Super 12 coaches cannot.

If that is the case, then I have no problem with it, for South African rugby needs good black Springboks for the simple reason that it is the only way that the sport is going to move away from the perception, accentuated by the previous Bok management, that it is a game dominated by white people. For rugby to survive in the South Africa of tomorrow, it needs to sell to a new market.

That black players often find their development blocked by the subconscious racism of white coaches is evidenced by the number of times these players have confounded those coaches when forced through by the fast-track method. Indeed, if memory serves me correctly, it was this policy which first saw a useful middle-order batsman called Herschelle Gibbs retreaded into a test opener.

I hear those who say politics should not be part of it, but sorry, anyone who thinks that in this day and age it is acceptable to field a Springbok team with 15 whites in it is simply naïve. They should accept the realities of the country they live in, where racial representivity is rightly a big issue across many different levels and effects far more than just rugby players, or go and live somewhere else.

There are many who have asked me since the selection why Wayne Julies is in the team. My response is to ask them a question: Why was Trevor Halstead, a white player, in the first Bok team of last year? Halstead, like Julies, had not done much in the Super 12, yet he was selected because the coach of the time, having worked with him, rated him highly. Straeuli spoke of Halstead as a coach’s choice, and no-one challenged him on that.

White rates Julies highly, he has never made any secret of it, and the former Bolander is hence a coach’s choice. But why the big fuss over Julies when there wasn’t the same fuss over Halstead?

Perhaps Julies will show us against Ireland why White has such a high regard for him (Halstead didn’t take his chance), which is the point really of this article. In the past Springbok coaches have been pilloried, and rightly so, because they could not make up their minds and changed their combinations every five minutes.

White may yet do the same, but for Heaven’s sakes, this is his first selection of the year. He must know his job hinges on results, so why would he choose the team he did if he did not believe it was the one that had the best chance of fulfilling the objective he has set?

I too have some problems with the team selected. Taking two players who have hardly recovered from injury is not good sense, and in my opinion Bezuidenhout should have been there as a loosehead.

But the important point is that it is an opinion, and White is the man who will live or die on the Bok results. The time to criticise him is if or when it all comes apart, not before. And to suggest that he is part of an elaborate conspiracy theory against virtually every pressure group in South African rugby is just hogwash. If that was the case, we should nickname him Kamikaze.