{"id":11264,"date":"2012-06-08T23:04:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T21:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/06\/rugby-south-africa-trying-to-break-free-of-race-scrum\/"},"modified":"2012-06-08T23:04:57","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T21:04:57","slug":"rugby-south-africa-trying-to-break-free-of-race-scrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/rugby-south-africa-trying-to-break-free-of-race-scrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby-South Africa trying to break free of race scrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Jon Herskovitz<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG, June 8<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa start a home<br \/>\nseries against England on the weekend with a new coach, new<br \/>\ncaptain and old questions about not doing enough to address the<br \/>\npolitically sensitive issue of the racial composition of the<br \/>\nteam.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Former President Nelson Mandela helped turn the Springboks &#8211;<br \/>\nonce the sporting symbols of the white-minority apartheid regime<br \/>\n&#8211; into models of racial reconciliation when South Africa hosted,<br \/>\nand won, the 1995 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Since then, the governing body of South African rugby has<br \/>\nmade the transformation of the racial composition of its teams a<br \/>\ntop priority but the overwhelming majority of the Springbok<br \/>\nsquad new coach Heyneke Meyer named for the England series is<br \/>\nwhite.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>His predecessor, Peter de Villiers, said it should not be<br \/>\nthis way.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are more black players who are capable of playing for<br \/>\nSouth Africa than most people think,&#8221; former Springbok coach De<br \/>\nVilliers said in a book released in the past few weeks.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But before then, many talented young players have fallen<br \/>\nthrough the cracks in the system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>South Africans often speak of a racial divide in sports,<br \/>\nwith whites playing rugby and blacks playing soccer. But that<br \/>\nbreaks down in the southern part of the country where blacks<br \/>\nhave played rugby for decades and outnumber whites in organised<br \/>\nrugby by more than a five to one margin.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Black players from the region face numerous hurdles in<br \/>\nclimbing the ranks due to a lack of sponsorship for<br \/>\nblack-majority clubs, white coaches who favour white players and<br \/>\nresistance from upper levels of rugby for putting blacks on the<br \/>\nfield, critics said.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jon Herskovitz JOHANNESBURG, June 8 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa start a home series against England on the weekend with a new coach, new captain and old questions about not doing enough to address the politically sensitive issue of the racial composition of the team. Former President Nelson Mandela helped turn the Springboks &#8211; once [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-11264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}