Desperate for a hot harvest
15 Oct 2012
RYAN VREDE writes that the injection of Springboks into the Currie Cup elevated the standard so significantly that what happened before them may as well have been a different competition.
It confirmed to me that South Africa’s depth in talent is not as vast as some suggest or would like to believe it is, and that there is a notable gap in quality between the very best the country has and the next tier of players.
We need to move past the idea that there is exceptional talent in abundance. The standard of the competition showed there isn’t. There was a very small pool of gifted players capable of being competent Super Rugby participants. The remainder were Vodacom Cup standard, while a significant number of players on show at the bigger unions in the Currie Cup should have been on club duty.
Certainly the quality of New Zealand’s domestic cup was better, and this for a country that boasts a fraction of South Africa’s player numbers (there are a 109 878 registered senior male players in South Africa compared to New Zealand’s 27 347). Having watched both competitions, I have to conclude that the standard of New Zealand’s fringe players is higher, although it would be difficult to support that assertion outside of this empirical evidence.
I can’t think of any young player who seriously advanced his cause for Springbok selection on the strength of his Currie Cup performances. This wasn’t always the case. As recently as 2005 and 2006 there was a burst of exceptional young bucks, among them Frans Steyn, JP Pietersen, Brad Barritt, Ruan Pienaar and Waylon Murray and Pierre Spies. How desperately the country needs another harvest like that.
South Africa’s strong school system will continue to service the unions with ordinary, good, very good and potential internationals, but a bigger influx of the latter two categories is essential over the next couple of years to raise the Currie Cup’s standard. A strong premier domestic cup is absolutely vital for the health of Springbok rugby.
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87 Comments
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15 Oct 2012, 10:54 am
@willievz-49:
So which non white’s pre 1991 would you have had in the team to replace the incumbent white?
15 Oct 2012, 11:15 am
@Brads-50:
you sound as old as me mate
no doubt in nz you’ve had a more liberal govt than us.
but in hindsight, i’ve often tried to put myself in the shoes of the afrikaners at the time. a small minority trying to hold on to political power and their “culture”.
could not have been easy and most of the world didn’t understand this.
much like israel takes so much flack now.
15 Oct 2012, 11:34 am
@charo-52:
One of the attitudes that amuses me based on the comments from a lot of folk, is the notion that today’s values have been universal throughout history.
Far from it.
It’s a bit like tolerating smoking.
40 years ago if you were a non smoker you not only let people light up inside your home, you may even have provided them with cigarettes, but for damn sure you had plenty of ashtrays to keep them happy.
Today you wouldn’t let them enter your property with a lit cigarette.
Rugby was like that, so was society.
We evolved.
15 Oct 2012, 13:40 pm
@charo-47: wasnt just the 1960s tour Charo, as well you know.. you can try to hide the fact that your father and his fathers were racist, as you still are today..
NZ teams before the 70s were all affected by not being able to select Maori players to tour the republic, you can try to bury it by being obtuse and a denialist, but it is part of history mate..
how strange that a racist would want to bury any semblance of evidence of his heritage
15 Oct 2012, 13:52 pm
@poppa69-54:
such a load of bullshitt.
for maori’s not being selected for the nz team before 1970 look closer to home at the unofficial policies and practises of the day, as performed by your pakeha kiwi brothers.
15 Oct 2012, 13:53 pm
@Brads-46:
Good post.
I always lose it when a Kiwi refuses to admit that the Islands have improved NZL rugby. Hell, SA would so the same thing (anyone would), but I would be the first to admit the benfits.
15 Oct 2012, 13:55 pm
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-55:
True.
Some Aussies and Kiwis always blast the old SA (and rightfully so).
But they forget that their own countries were just as racist, they just didn’t make it official.
15 Oct 2012, 14:08 pm
@londonshark-57:
yip
some of these mutton chops live in hollywood fantasy land fulltime.
15 Oct 2012, 16:28 pm
Thats your opinion Ryan, and you are entitled to it. But dont write as if it is gospel truth!
Many of the Currie Cup games were great to watch and some of the young talent on display was brilliant.
Please also remember that a lot of those “exceptional young bucks” were actually playing for the Boks (or injured)! Estebeth, Kolisi, Coenie etc.
15 Oct 2012, 16:29 pm
@Brads-53: Excellent comparison
15 Oct 2012, 16:42 pm
@poppa69-54:
sorry to disappoint you pops but my father was an english immigrant and a pacifist – thanks to ww2.
he arrived before apartheid and vehemently opposed it all his life.
like i said to you before, generalizations can be a biitch.
16 Oct 2012, 01:55 am
Willie Le Roux
Lionel Mapoe
Raymond Rhule
JP du Plessis
Arno Botha
CJ Stander
Anthony Volminck
Cobus Reinach
Monde Hadebe
Paul Jordaan
Sbura Sithole
Scara Ntubeni
Terror Mthembu
Rynhardt Elstadt
Goosen
Jantjies
Kolisi
PSDT
Etzebeth
Kitschoff
Coetzee
Taute
Lambie
Hougaard
F.Steyn
JP
De Jongh
Beast
Bismark
Vermuelen
Alberts
Brussow
Flo
Kankowski
Rallapelle
Mvovo
Serfontein
16 Oct 2012, 02:03 am
Willie Le Roux
Lionel Mapoe
Raymond Rhule
JP du Plessis
Arno Botha
CJ Stander
Anthony Volminck
Cobus Reinach
Monde Hadebe
Paul Jordaan
Sbura Sithole
Scara Ntubeni
Terror Mthembu
Rynhardt Elstadt
Nizaam Carr
Goosen
Jantjies
Kolisi
PSDT
Etzebeth
Kitschoff
Coetzee
Taute
Lambie
Hougaard
F.Steyn
JP
De Jongh
Beast
Bismark
Vermuelen
Alberts
Brussow
Flo
Kankowski
Rallapelle
Mvovo
Serfontein
Wall-Smith
Mbovane
Pollard
Adendorff
There’s plenty
It’s the mindset and coaching/rugby philosophy in SA that’s the problem.can we get the best out of such a talented pool especially with skillsets available
Won’t happen though
16 Oct 2012, 03:11 am
@Tacitus-15: You are such a ****…you wouldnt know anything about NZ rugby. 40-50years ago (so this is pre-1970 All Black Tour to SA) SA would not allow NZ to send any player of colour – that means Maori. So it was your rules that prevented that, it had nothing to do with NZ not allowing Maori to play – Maori, Pacific Islander were always allowed to play rugby in NZ. What a sham you are, you have no integrity, you have no intelligence, NZ didnt have WHITES only rules you dumbass…get your facts straight and know what you are talking about before you spout off your Jappie mouth…what a joke, what a loser, go fetch a bone my man…
16 Oct 2012, 03:18 am
You know I would just like it if Saffas would just get passed their one-eyed view and give credit to a little South Pacific country (NZ) for having a good rugby team, we always will have – it is part of the DNA of nearly every young boy who plays in bare feet and learns about this wonderful game. Saffas on the other hand, well there was the privelege of whites only playing the game and look at how that has impacted on your game – nothing has changed, the black man of africa is trying his best to raise the profile of the game over there but no it is still a whitemans game. Whilst here in good ole NZ we have melded the cultural strengths of different ethnicities and VOILA we have the AB’s – the winningiest team on the planet, the TEAM everyone wants so desperately to beat, the most admired, followed and read about team in the world of rugby….one day SA rugby may rise to that level and when it does, NZ will have move a few more light years ahead and so you will always be in catch up mode….HAIL the MIGHTY AB’s team of the game of rugby, beaters of Boks, Wallabies, Frogs, Poms et al….hail them people, for they are the best.
16 Oct 2012, 04:58 am
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-55:
So tell us then. You seem to know alot about NZ and our policies….so you think
The problem i see and we are talking rugby here is that NZRU listened to the racist old SA and let them be pushed around just so they can play rugby. Maoris and pacific islanders missed out.
Therefore NZRU and government are just as much to blame to a point. Reasons why the govenrment apologised to maori and pacific islanders a few years ago.
@londonshark-57:
Just as racist?
We did have issues but not quite to the extent SA had and lets say Ozzie, those guys got away with alot.
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-58:
Deny away Bakkies. Nothing that went on in those years was hollywood or false.
It was terrible what happened, yet you find the time to blame NZ lol….typical.
16 Oct 2012, 05:36 am
@Hurricane-66:
Hurri, just as a matter of interest, and given what Brads said in #50, how many players missed out?
16 Oct 2012, 05:51 am
@Slartibartfast-67:
Mate i would need to dive deeper to find who missed out.
Look i believe over those years not a huge amount but there were some key Maori players that did miss.
It would be interesting to find the number, and its a hard call to say if those players were picked that they would have changed the outcome of the match.
I will have a hunt.
16 Oct 2012, 05:55 am
@Slartibartfast-67:
Oh and by the way, i am not throwing all the blame at SA at all.
We had our own little issues internally, as stated we did accept the no Maori tours, we also need to take blame.
16 Oct 2012, 06:07 am
@Hurricane-68: @Hurricane-69:
Thanks Hurri, would be interesting but don’t worry to much if you can’t find anything.
Mr Returning Serve, Master of Generalisation loves to tar us all with the same brush but reality is that a large % of us were either still but a twinkle in our dad’s eye or plain oblivious to what happened at the time. For vark steaks man, we only got TV in SA in 1974 or was it 1976 and then the biggest show was Haas Das se Nuuskas that had little to say about it all…
16 Oct 2012, 07:56 am
@Hurricane-66:
oh hurri, you are so naive it actually pains me a little to point out a different view to your precious nz than the ones you guys are sold on.
Who said: “The white populace which holds itself in such high esteem, the hypocrites who make the same old polite, meaningless sounds about Maoris but who wouldn’t lower themselves to mix with the Maori on a Maori footing… The circumstances of many Maori are terrifying, but where is the concern for these people? And we spew out the platitudes about race relations, New Zealand’s paradise of racial equality”?
Was it:
A. Tariana Turia
B. Ranginui Walker
C. Hone Harawira
D. Tame Iti
E. Colin Meads
The answer is E. New Zealand rugby’s most iconic figure said that – and much more in the same vein – in Colin Meads: All Black (1974), which sold by the pallet-load and created a template for the ghostwritten sporting autobiographies that have poured forth ever since.
The cause of Meads’s ire was the Labour Government’s decision to “postpone” – in effect cancel – the 1973 Springbok tour of this country. His target was the white middle-class who, as he saw it, were terribly exercised about the suffering of South Africa’s black and coloured communities under apartheid but unaware of or indifferent to the grim everyday reality of many of their own indigenous people.
The paradox of rugby is that although it can’t seem to shake the suspicion that it harbours racist attitudes – witness the abuse directed at beleaguered Blues coach Pat Lam, a Samoan New Zealander – it has achieved a level of harmonious, productive integration that most of our institutions and sectors can only aspire to. The “browning” of rugby over the past 20 years has generated three controversies.
http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/sport/rugby-and-ethnicity/
16 Oct 2012, 08:06 am
However unlikely that prospect, it
wouldn’t be contentious to suggest the number of Pacific players today as being
a far cry from 1970 when Bryan Williams was the sole All Black of Pacific
descent.
Indeed, rugby has become the tale of just how far Pacific people have
come. Supposedly, we see in rugby evidence of how, in Immigration Minister
David Cunliffe’s words, “Pasifika New Zealanders are well-established members
of our community—growing in numbers and going from strength to strength.”
16 Oct 2012, 08:07 am
http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/8202/1/umi-umd-5398.pdf
16 Oct 2012, 08:23 am
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-71:
Get real, Pat Lam was out of his depth but didn’t deserve the abuse from some cowardly racist who attacked him anonymously.
There was a general feeling of anti Pat Lam as coach in the Blues community, but not a ground swell of anti Pat Lam because he was Samoan.
16 Oct 2012, 08:28 am
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-72:
The real reason why Bryan Williams was the first person of Samoan heritage to play for the AB’s was because there were so few of them in NZ until the mid sixties.
16 Oct 2012, 08:44 am
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-71:
Naive?
At least i dont takeone clipping that someone said and use that to prove apoint…..from one person lol…pathetic.
What pains me is the fact you go out find one little clipping of what someone said and thats it.
What are you trying to prove here?
Point is and known that Maoris and Pacific Islanders were not allowed in your country….fact. This is what the discussion somehow came about.
Not once have you said anything about what SA did but blamed Kiwis. Really sick of your dumb posts that only ever point to one country as fault.
Soutgh Africa has changed…..maybe you should
16 Oct 2012, 08:51 am
@Brads-74:
Exactly, he was not great a coach at all. Strange that it happens in Auckland, close to the North Shore
@Brads-75:
I believe Muldoon opened the borders upand allowed Pacific Islanders easy access into NZ.
What Bakkies is slowly trying coming around to is that he believes ABs are stronger cos of our Pacific Islanders/Kiwis in the team now. What they seem to forget is that also the Island teams have got stronger cos of NZ. Most the Samoan team and tongan team plays in NZ.
There were more Kiwis playing in the RWC than any nation.
16 Oct 2012, 08:56 am
@Hurricane-77:
Don’t you worry about the Blues in 2013.
Nothing a couple of Knights worth of planning can’t sort out.
16 Oct 2012, 09:06 am
@Hurricane-77:
You are correct about the heritage back flow for the islands.
16 Oct 2012, 09:19 am
@Brads-78:
hehehe
lucky buggers
16 Oct 2012, 10:40 am
@Hurricane-66:
True true.
Aus were actually the bloody worst at their peak. They used to hunt aborigines.
16 Oct 2012, 11:22 am
@Brads-74:
argue the point, brads.
this is about racism in nz rugby prior to the 1970′s and the extent to which it affected the number of non whites who were allowed into the ab squad.
pops goes out of his way to blame sa for their being so few on the spurious grounds that we prevented the nzru from selecting any but that only applied to any nz team touring in sa and its got nothing to do with the fact that non whites were only picked in a few token numbers and instances of exceptional skill by the white powers of nz rugby.
@Brads-75:
that is a lame answer if ever i heard one.
please refer above.
@Hurricane-76:
no, please refer above.
pops made a lame claim for their not being enough non whites in ab teams pre 1970 and i assert this had more to do with white nz’ers attitudes than anything to do with us.
keep believing your fairytale if you so prefer, boet.
16 Oct 2012, 12:12 pm
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-82:
They didnt pick Maoris cos they could not play them in SA anyways.
Obviously NZRU decided playing SA was more important.
What part of this do you not understand?
Do you think its all NZs fault?
The Springboks, South Africa’s national rugby team, first toured New Zealand in 1921. They played one close-fought match against a team of ‘New Zealand Natives’ (M?ori) and a South African journalist reported that the Springboks were ‘frankly disgusted’ at playing against ‘a band of coloured men’.1 On their next tour in 1937, the Springboks refused to play an all-M?ori team, although several M?ori were included in the All Blacks. Te Arawa tribe called for a sporting and cultural boycott of South Africa, and most M?ori supported them. Some protested with banners announcing ‘Cash before Conscience’ – tours were lucrative.
As you can see the Maori did not want to play until NZRU manned up to the racist country that SA was….
Now it seems once again you have blamed NZ?
I understand and have said it was our fault for listening to an ugly nation at the time called South Africa but we did. But you seem content that the non selection of Maoris had nothing to do with you.
Point is Maoris didnt want to play until SA changed…understand
16 Oct 2012, 12:55 pm
@Hurricane-83:
no hurri, there was also racism in rugby and all walks of life towards the maori’s/pi’s by your white pakeha brothers. certainly not as bad as sa but it was there.
16 Oct 2012, 13:10 pm
@i_love_u_bakkiesbotha-84:
I do not deny that, us Maoris did experience racism in NZ.
Whoever says otherwise,it is themthat lives in a Fairytale.
But you on the other hand seems to think it was NZ doing.
SA had a huge influence on our sad and weak Government at the time.
And i said that earlier we are to blame as well.
So understand, SA had a huge part in the non selection of Maoris.
16 Oct 2012, 16:00 pm
@Hurricane-85:
hurri i can see you are giving ground and making an effort to meet me somewhere along the way, thanks.
are you saying that before 1970 sa had the power to influence nz’s internal behaviour? sjoe! as forceful, uncompromisng as the sa gov may have been at the time and however much a slick foreign affairs routine we may have had i really dont think we were influential enough to sway nz’ers to adopt any racist attitudes or policies within their own country.
we may have at best (worst) just the worst possible example as a sporting competitor to have sporting contacts with but all this would have done is give the already racist and prejudiced white nz’ers the secret affirmation they may have needed to behave in the ways they clearly were.
a lot has changed in nz since but so too in sa.
16 Oct 2012, 16:02 pm
busy day for me
could not answer you any quicker
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