adminJohannesburg — The South African Rugby Union will discuss the reintroduction of the quota system into the local game as soon as next month in order to align itself with the demands made by the Minister of Sport surrounding transformation in the game.SARU president Oregan Hoskins told supersport.com that the sport will need to make “radical, drastic, immediate changes” to comply with the pressure being brought upon it by the sports ministry after SARU and other federations met with the government regarding the proposed changes, including a possible reintroduction of quotas into the Currie Cup and Super Rugby competitions.
But Hoskins has committed rugby to embracing the changes, and will see them as “a positive” — even though they are not ideal in the short term. South African Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula threatened to withhold permission for sporting federations to compete internationally if there was not a 60-40 split between black and white players in future representative teams, saying the pace of transformation was too slow among sporting federations.
Hoskins said that rugby “doesn’t have a choice but to comply” but committed all 14 provincial unions and SARU to “meet the challenges as rugby and tackle it head on” to make South Africa proud as a nation.
“With the amount of pressure that we are under now by the Minister of Sport to change at the highest level, we’ve been told in no uncertain terms that there needs to be a radical, drastic and immediate change,” Hoskins told supersport.com.
“The only way we can effect change is to use the quota system even more extensively than we currently do. This is not the optimum way to transform, it a short-term measure and there is no other way to change representation in teams in the immediate short-terms.
“While it may not be perfect, and not be optimum, there is no other way we can meet the demands of the Minister of Sport and seriously implement transformation in the Absa Currie cup and at franchise level.
“We’ve been put under serious threat by government, and we don’t really want to have government intervening in sport. It’s not good for the game, so we have no alternative as a federation but to look at quotas in our senior ranks.”
Hoskins, who did his thesis on transformation in rugby and why the sport loses so much black talent, says rugby needs to break the “glass ceiling” that currently exists for black players.
“There is a glass ceiling for black players,” Hoskins adds, “I’ve researched this in doing my MBA, I’ve spoken to all players across the board and there are a whole lot of reasons why players don’t make it — including coaching and administrators’ perceptions of their abilities and coaches not having the confidence in players in a particular position.” —Supersport
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