South Africa must pick overseas players - White

The following from news24:-

"The only way we’re going to be able to keep our best players in South Africa in the future is to pick a Springbok squad in June that’s made up predominantly of players currently based overseas.

I’m not trying to give you a headache with what sounds like a riddle, but this is the reality of the migraine that SA Rugby has got at the moment.

Whenever I’ve been asked, in the years following my time coaching the Boks, about picking overseas-based players, I’ve always been adamantly against it. I haven’t changed my stance.

But the problem is, when you have almost every top player leaving the country, then you get to a tipping point where you have to pick those players.

After the 2011 Rugby World Cup, if we’d stuck to the regulation that, in order to play for South Africa, you have to play your rugby there, I believe that many players wouldn’t have left. But we allowed them to be picked and that made it easy for them to leave.

Jan Serfontein is the latest player to sign up for a move to Europe. In 2012, he was rated as the best in the world in his age group. This is a guy who grew up playing rugby at Grey College, played provincial rugby from young, and aspired every day to be a Springbok. And now, at the age of 24, he’s decided to leave South Africa and go play overseas.

If you consider that in context, we’ve obviously missed something as a rugby nation. But you can’t blame the players because they’re allowed to go play overseas and still play for South Africa at the next World Cup. Serfontein isn’t losing out on anything by going overseas so how can anyone get upset with the guy when he can have his cake and eat it?

And that’s what is sad – as much as we want to say you can’t have your cake and eat it, we’ve created a situation where that’s exactly what our players can do, and we’re now forced to give it to them.

It feels like SA Rugby is in a spiral because we’ve put ourselves in a position where an Overseas SA XV would probably beat the Boks every time, so there’s no way we can afford not to pick the best overseas players now.

That’s one of the things that New Zealand got right, and I’m envious of the way they made the All Blacks jersey priceless.

Do you think they didn’t need Carl Hayman back in 2007 when he moved to Newcastle, or Nick Evans, when the All Blacks lost a number of flyhalves leading up to the 2011 World Cup final? But the reality was that they made their rules about eligibility and they were strict on it.

Likewise, the Bok jersey should be worth a lot more than any money you get overseas; playing for your country should be priceless. The jersey must mean something and the only way to get that value back is to win.

Last year, we lost eight out of 12 Tests which means it’s conceivable that there are now guys who have played Test rugby for South Africa and have never won.

Do you think any player wants to stay involved with a team when they’re not winning? That’s not the nature of sport or sportsmen.

So the only way to fix that is to win. To do that, you have to pick the best players, and most of our best players are based overseas.

Unless you start winning, and make people feel special about wearing that Bok jersey, and make people feel good about watching them play, and make sponsors feel good about being associated with that brand, you’re never going to have the leverage to keep your best players in the country.

That famous photograph of Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela holding the Webb Ellis Cup together is such a compelling image because the Boks won the 1995 World Cup.

If they were standing there with runners-up medals, most supporters probably wouldn’t remember the picture.

When that winning feeling comes back, and everyone feels like this is a special group again, then guys will want to stay in that group. That’s how you create the priceless jersey."

I was hoping that White would provide a few names at least whom he would consider - but nothing of the sort.   There is no doubt that the Montpellier reject would have come up with names since the foreign based players had a poor history in 2016 when called up to play for the Springboks:-

I would rate the players who were called up as follows:-

Habana    -    3/10

Pietersen -    2,5/10

Morne Steyn - 2,5/10

Goosen         -  6/10

Kitshof          - 7/10

Louw            -  4/10

So with that in mind I do not believe there are only a potential handful of players that should be considered.

I would say only two players are to be called up of the above and perhaps we should add Rhodes and Vermeulen to those 2.   Most of the ex-Springboks playing in the  NH are over the hill and they are not up to test standard anymore,  

There are rumours that the dolt Coetzee is considering calling up Bismarck and Fat Fransie - probably a suggestion from White.   What he wants with Fat Fransie heaven only knows what he would produce.   He is not an arse of a center - or perhaps he is and at flyhalf he is even worse than Morne.   And Bismark  is also over the hill.  

The Meyer era took us into a scenario that he did nothing to develop younger players and one wonders what the rugby "geriatrics "  earning their pesions in Europe could contribute to the team in the longer run? 

 

A team of locally based Springboks - even coached by a clown like Allister Coetzee - would still put 50 points over an overseas based XV coached by Joke White.

WC winning coach vs Urinal 139.....I know who I believe.

 The quota policy is not applied. Yet you must pretend it is.
NH players are selected. Yet you must pretend they are not.
The impossibility to take a plain situation as it is.
This article is posted a few days after another telling that the current coach is going to select two players from NH. As so often with excellent men, mental contorsion is a valued skill.

 Another brand of storytelling: NH made SA team would beat the current team. A feeble attempt of distraction.
At the moment, the game is impossible to organize so it is another of these useless questions to ask and to answer.

It also smells of those ponzi schemes excellent men enjoy so much. One SA team is justified to exist because it beats another SA team. How to justify the second? By bringing a third SA team into the equation. The second SA team is justified because it beats a third and so on.

SA people are told to be practicable people who want simple questions and simple answers.
Waxing over the result of a game that is not meant to be is not simple and it is not practicable.

Here are the simple, practicable questions to answer in order to justify the continuation of rugby in SA.

Three world cups played. How many won by SA? Any answer below 2 means the termination of SA rugby.

Six four nations played. How many won by SA? Any answer below 5 means the termination of SA rugby.

Those are the simple, practical questions to answer. Not this fancied match that can not be.

 That tale of the NH team was already addressed. Here's another round.

NZ strive to keep their players in a unified setting. EN has started to do the same.
Yet SA, as the number of past decisions was not enough, want to add another by going against the tide. It would be better to make a team off players playing in a scattered setting.


A SA team made of NH players only: the foreign demand on SA players is uneven. It focuses on a certain type of players fitting a certain image. SA players who escaped the stereotyping draft won their ticket mostly through international performances (which means that the SA squad must perform for that)
NH clubs might want to recruit outside their stereotyping if the SA player brings in the image of a WC winner.

This leaves the pool of players to select from fully determined by foreign demand. It means an unbalanced squad, with players unable to play together and holes in the team since there is not a demand for every position in the game.


Fixing this squad with SA played players means mixing players who play on different schedules, in different approaches. Mixing players from Top14 where everything is played as slow as possible with players playing in SR which is played with more pace is going to give headaches.

 Trad, according to your yard stick, there should be no rugby teams. Even the All Blacks are at les than 50% for world cups won.

 No, this yard stick is specific to SA.

Been said many times, SA failed to take the professional turn like no other.

NZ fits the bill for the WC. They play winner rugby so it is out of question for them to be stopped by this yard stick. NZ's problem is they've grown too dominant for their own good.

Other rugby nations have factored in a long time ago they were playing loser rugby. They took various measures to ensure support to loser rugby. One of these measures is representativity. SA is one country in a peculiar situation they must use political influence to present a level of representativity that is not. SA has zero non white player to play in a team where the majority of the population is non white.
It is an achievement by itself when you consider that other countries starting on a much thinner base managed to bring one or two good enough to join the selection.
One failure among others.

More importantly, in other countries, kids do not die from starvation. AU rugby is in a similar state but AU can afford this kind of luxury.

The only justification for SA rugby is winning. SA rugby must win. SA rugby does not win, it is terminated.

 Kids in South Africa does not die of starvation.  Some get murdered and neglected, but starvation? NO. There is enough opportunities for people of all pigmentation to play whatever sport they want in SA, but the sport of rugby is embraced more by white and Cape Coloured than whatever the government defines African Blacks to be. Animal farm to a T. Some animals are more equal than others. Real rugby folks doesn't see race, they support brilliance regardless of race. Pity you don't comprehend that.

The Traditionalist's chip is almost as big as Urinal 139's chip about the Cape.....two victims, what a bore!

My question has always been why the ANC is only concerned about white v black rugby players? Why has nobody ever had an issue with the fact that there is not and has never been a single Indian rugby player? That should be proof enough that it is purely a political issue and not a demographic one. And then the ANC are the ones who have always been shouting that there is no place for politics in sport.

Kids are dying of starvation in Sudan, Rwanda, Yemen, etc and they don't play rugby in those countries.....

 I'm not sure why anyone tries to reason with a Bore.

Who cares what it is that have you so confused?

 The Traditionalist's chip is almost as big as Urinal 139's chip about the Cape.....two victims, what a bore!

Victim of what?
The chip is on other people's shoulders. People on this board have not yet realized that the ANC works for the continuation of rugby in SA and that anyone who supports the continuation of rugby in SA is in the same bed as the ANC and if of SA, represented by the ANC. Yet those people fail to associate with the ANC and even see people going for termination of rugby as associated with the ANC. Speaking of a chip...

People who want the termination of rugby in SA lay in a different bed.

 My question has always been why the ANC is only concerned about white v black rugby players? Why has nobody ever had an issue with the fact that there is not and has never been a single Indian rugby player? That should be proof enough that it is purely a political issue and not a demographic one.

One possible answer is that the ANC works to keep rugby going in SA and that adding another constraint on representativity of the team would severely jeopardize the case.

SA failed to get out one decent rugby player out of a certain type of non whites, despite the huge amount they are given to work with (whereas other nations manage the trick)
So adding another population, less numerous, and wishing that this population is also represented.

In all cases, this argument works in favour of terminating rugby in SA.
If there is no indian players in the team, then the team is no representative. A non representative team that does not win means termination of rugby in SA.

 
You certainly can waffle on and on about nothing.

I can't even finish the first paragraph ... of any of your posts ... and believe me, I've tried..

Warra warra warra ...

Are you the spawn of some incestuous relationship? There is something retarded about you.

Why don't you just copy and past the same old horshyte you posted last week.

It amounts to the same nonsense anyway.

 CC, finally something we can agree on.

I can't even finish the first paragraph ... of any of your posts ... and believe me, I've tried..

It amounts to the same nonsense anyway.


Admitting to not being able to read the whole and yet passing a judgement on it.

Brilliant.

 
The little bits I've managed to keep down was enough for me to pass judgement on.

If you've read one ... you've read them all.

You bore me to tears with your repetitive nonsense.

Contribute something of substance or leave it altogether.

 If you've read one ... you've read them all.

You bore me to tears with your repetitive nonsense.


Speaking of non sense, this one is good: If you've read one ... you've read them all.