PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Arrested Development in Port Elizabeth: “Rugby development” has been a catch-phrase in South Africa ever since the advent of democracy and our return to international competition in the 1990’s. What the exact meaning of that term is...
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PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Arrested Development in Port Elizabeth: “Rugby development” has been a catch-phrase in South Africa ever since the advent of democracy and our return to international competition in the 1990’s. What the exact meaning of that term is though, is unclear – it depends on who you ask. To some it means racial quotas, to others it’s a political tool, to many it’s a vague shapeless concept that they’ll say they support in order to avoid doing it. Huge budgets are allocated to rugby development annually yet the fact is that today, almost twenty years af ter the Springboks played their first IRB-sanctioned Test match in eight years against the All Blacks at Ellis Park, “rugby development” , whilst showing definite signs of paying increasing dividends, has failed to deliver the hoped for number of “development” (read “non-white”) players to the highest level of the game in this country. There are various theories as to why this might be the case: racism, lack of a rugby tradi
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