Sometimes race card used too easily

One of the most stunning aspects of the Stormers drug scandal is its role in sparking what can best be described as a side-show around the status in the squad of Hanyani Shimange.

The former Cheetahs hooker was initially left out of the squad of 27 that travelled to London for the final Super 12 warm-up match against the Wasps. At the time of the announcement, judging from the lack of comment on it in the various media, this was no big deal.

It suddenly became a big deal in some quarters, however, when Shimange reappeared in the Stormers squad following the dramatic and last minute exit of Dawid Britz. Apparently the Stormers were already on the bus to the airport ahead of their flight to London when the call came through that Britz had tested positive.

You could say the Stormers management were partly to blame for some of the confusion and some of the speculation which then followed. Some journalists tell me that their initial enquiries to the relevant authorities were met with a “no-comment” and a referral to the South African Rugby Union.

When no-one at the national governing body was available for comment, it did leave media people sitting between a rock and a hard place: a player had been withdrawn from a squad, and all the officials were acting very strangely about it and saying they could not talk about it. Heck, that does not look like just a bit of fire to go with the smoke, it looks like a raging inferno!

But then what were the Stormers management to do? Stormers managing director Rob Wagner tells me they had a press release written up, and has offered to show it to me as proof. He then had to instruct his media man to hold back on the release when he received notification, as he was about to board the plane to London, that as per IRB regulations, officials were barred from commenting on any matter relating to a specific positive drug test.

It was in this grey period between when Wagner gave his “no-comment” and the one where the news of the drug test was leaked that some media, pressed to find a reason for the sudden swap of players, started their speculation. One player was classified as black, the one he was replacing was white, this is South Africa, and the talking point in South African rugby so far this year has been almost exclusively race. So what would you think if you had the above facts, and no other background information, to work on?

It does not, or should not, therefore require much of a leap in the imagination to arrive at the conclusion, as some journalists did, that there may have been some meddling by politicians. If that had been the case, it would be bizarre if you consider this was just a warm-up game and not the real thing. But as I said, this is South Africa. It has happened before.

Yet it is not so much the speculation over the machinations behind Shimange’s sudden reappearance in the squad that concerns me, but the way some have belatedly started to question Shimange’s exclusion from the initial squad on the basis that here is another example of a black player being mistreated.

That is just complete garbage, and those who buy into this rubbish would recognise it as such if they had just bothered to phone Stormers coach Gert Smal earlier in the season and asked him about his selection policy for the pre-season games.

Smal told me quite clearly during a pre-season camp in Somerset West that he was going to rotate players during the three warm-up fixtures, which after all is what any decent coach should do during the preparation phase. It is simple rugby logic: you have a squad of 30-odd players, you must ensure they all get game-time before the competition starts, and that means not every player plays in every single game.

The Stormers have three hookers. Shimange started the first game and then played off the bench in the second. Britz played off the bench in the first, then missed out on the trip to Dubai for the Gwent Dragons game, and was due to play off the bench against the Wasps before the drug result came through.

Britz’s appearance in the above equation did not mean Smal was weighing him up against Shimange, who is a Springbok. He was giving him game-time to ensure that he would be ready to play should Shimange, or the other hooker, Pieter Dixon, be injured in the Super 12.

Plain logic, and Smal would have rightly been roasted by some critics, including this one, if he had only played two hookers throughout the entire warm-up phase.

It is not just among the hookers that this rotation policy was being followed. Lock Rob Linde played the first game. Having put on several kilograms and playing fairly well against Boland, I was surprised when Linde was not even among the reserves for the Dragons game. Like all journalists should before committing themselves to print, I phoned Smal to ask him whether he had dispensed with Linde. The coach told me that this was not the case, the lock would be back for the game against the Wasps, which he was.

It was a similar situation at scrumhalf. Tertius Carse played in the first two games but was told ahead of time by Smal that he would not even be on the bench for the third, by which time Bolla Conradie was due to return to action. Neil de Kock, the Stormers captain, has picked up his match practice this season by playing only off the bench.

What is important to note is that these were all warm-up matches, they were not the real thing. It was all about giving players a chance to play. Leaving out Shimange had nothing to do with Smal not rating him, just as Schalk Burger’s non-appearance in the starting lineup for the Dragons game did not mean Smal has suddenly decided the IRB Player of the Year is no longer up to it.

Gerrie Britz, the Springbok lock lured to Cape Town at considerable expense, is another player used sparingly so far by the Stormers, as is Quinton Davids. You can bet your last 50 cents piece though that both will face the Sharks. It is then that we should be getting excited about the team selection and scrutinising the coach’s commitment to transformation, not now.

Transformation is important, it is a non-negotiable. But it is a fact of science and nature that black players sometimes have as much need to be used sparingly and to be rested as white players like Burger do. While transformation is an important issue, sometimes the race card is used too quickly. It certainly has been in this instance.