Rugby transformation must remain before court – Judge
“I know that there have been a lot of injuries, but the players have really recovered well”, Meyer told reporters. Mandela’s support of the Springboks – as the national rugby team is called – in the 1995 World Cup which was both hosted and ultimately won by South Africa became a powerful force for national unity. “From hence transformation will start to happen”, Mokhoanatse said.
“We still insist that they are not representative of the country but we’ve been given an opportunity to take the matter forward”.
Coach Heyneke Meyer has included nine players from the Springboks’ winning squad of 2007 as he trumpets the need for calm heads in the pressure moments that are sure to come, particulalry in the closing stages of the tournament, when the margin between success and failure can be millimetres.
The leading all-time try-scorer for the Springboks, 32-year-old wing Bryan Habana, from South Africa’s mixed-race “coloured” community, has expressed unease at talk of race.
“This particular action will enable South Africans who are aggrieved by the lack of transformation to approach the courts in the future”. This means that these guys aren’t catered for. I don’t believe that black rugby players are being given a chance to prove themselves when it comes to rugby but I also think that might be because they don’t really show interest.
Even those numbers have been debated in the South Africa media, with the Stormers centre Damian de Allende’s father Tony feeling obliged to state that his son – who has some Portuguese ancestry – is white.
The 2015 Rugby World Cup, which opens in England on September 18, may have to go on without one of the teams favored to win the Cup, the South Africa Springboks, as the national team in the former apartheid nation faces a legal challenge over its alleged failure to select a sufficient number of black players to the World Cup side.
“We live in a country where transformation is hugely important and that has been taken into consideration”. But that is not the case, it is just a mentality that we as people have since we are not being given a chance to prove that we do have talent and required skills to make it to the top. “In my mind, the most important thing now (is) that everyone sets aside their agendas and that everybody says I am going to support the team 100 percent”.