Unlike rugby, World Cup taps support from all South Africans

Roar Rookie

By Franklin Black, 10 Jul 2010 Franklin Black is a Roar Rookie

Tagged:: 2010 World Cup, football, Rugby Union, Springboks, World Cup

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The true following of football in South Africa has been clearly reflected by the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Not only is football the biggest sport in South Africa, it is the only sport with true support among the 80 percent (40 million) black population there.

Rugby union remains a pillar of the old apartheid regime, so beloved by the likes of Danie Craven.

Contrast the thousands of black faces in the crowds and in the streets with the almost exclusively white South African union crowds. The dribble we are fed that rugby union is the main sporting code of South Africa is shown up for being a mere wish of that code in competition with the real sporting choice for Africans: football.

Unless rugby union really confronts its own past in South Africa in a meaningful and honest way, that sport will never move forward except among its Afrkiaaner-dominated following.

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The Crowd Says (126) | Page 1 of Comments

rugbyfuture said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:33am | Report comment

was this article worthwhile for anything other than to try and bag rugby? one obviously isnt keeping up with the developments of the game there and has no interest in it, with their star players being black, their coach brown and their officials black it seems to be catching on, or perhaps it was the lack of crowds at the world cup that amused you most? of course this is mostly because of FIFA’s bad organisational skills and ability to adapt to a poor market.

a nod to this persons profile and his favourite sports spells out this articles true intension

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- ozby said | July 11th 2010 @ 1:34pm | Report comment
  
  Check the facts. There are more black people playing rugby then there are white people playing soccer. There are more black Springboks than there are white Bafana Bafana. One game stands for reconciliation and progress, the other one doesn’t. Just study the trends The blacks who entered the middle class adopt rugby and leave soccer behind them. This is the way it’s going. So whose future are you talking about?
  
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Kurt said | July 10th 2010 @ 2:33am | Report comment

Petty and unnecessary article, doesn’t reflect well on the author. It’s hardly news that soccer is more popular amongst black South Africans whilst Rugby has strong roots amongst the white population. However last time I looked the Rugby team does have some non-white players whilst the soccer team is exclusively black – so if we’re going to start accusing South African sports of being non-inclusive, perhaps we should start there?

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- Andyroo said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:05pm | Report comment
  
  Kurt South Africa have Booth who is a centre back and pretty popular.
  
  I’m only defending Bafana Bafana’s reputation not the authors.
  
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  - JF said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:13pm | Report comment
    
    Out of a squad of how many? Most Australian Rugby fans could easily rattle off half a dozen black Springboks, yet the team is still deemed a “pillar of the old apartheid regime” by the soccer nuts.
    
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    - Andyroo said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:20pm | Report comment
      
      I don’t have a problem with Rugby, I wasn’t trying to get into a pissing contest about the make up of South African teams. Just because this authors article is divisive doesn’t mean that it then becomes open season to bag out the code he claims to support.
      So I was refuting “the soccer team is exclusively black”.
      
      Unless the s on the end was a typo your nearly as bad as the author with the use of “nuts”. I don’t see any football fans agreeing with him.
      
      Edit: I’m pretty insulted you think I should be lumped in with the authors views ….. and don’t know on what grounds you have done so since I made it fairly clear I didn’t agree with him. Just an excuse to bash all Soccer fans is it JF?
      
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    - AndyRoo said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:33pm | Report comment
      
      First reply to this was moderated to death so I will try and be diplomatic.
      
      I made it fairly clear I didn’t agree with the author in my first post.
      
      I wasn’t partaking in “my code is better than your code” I was just correcting Kurts statement “the soccer team is exclusively black”.
      
      Your trying to imply i’m a soccer nut who deems the Springboks a “pillar of the old apartheid regime” …. not the case JF and very unfair not just to me but to the other Soccer fans who have also made an effort to post on here to say they don’t agree.
      
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      - kovana said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:38pm | Report comment
        
        Its all right Andy..
        
        Frank the Curling fan from scotland is trying to prove that he is a soccer fan from South Africa..
        
        Yet he reminds me of a certain Poster from Planet rugby forums….. lol
        
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      - JF said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:43pm | Report comment
        
        So out of a squad of 23 for the WC, there is 1 white player, is this correct? “Exclusively Black” seems a pretty apt description to me.
        
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        Andyroo said | July 10th 2010 @ 12:47pm | Report comment
        
        It seems we have different definitions of the word exclusive so I will leave you to carry on with your soccer bashing then.
        
        Andyroo said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:00pm | Report comment
        
        Actually JF I will leave something positive as well
        
        Check out the Doco “The Team That Never Played” it’s pretty good especially Keith Broad’s story and theirs no Rugby bashing in it.
        
        JF said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:12pm | Report comment
        
        Andy, yes you are right, a single white player means the team is not ‘exclusively’ black, how about 95.66% black, better?
        You can hardly accuse anyone of ‘soccer-bashing’ when this sort of tripe is published? What should we do – cop it on the chin? Unfortunately, as a soccer supporter you must suffer the consequences created by the actions of your fellow crazed soccer-supporting bretheren – like this bloke…and Foz.
        
        Axel V said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:27pm | Report comment
        
        JF…
        In a nation that is 80% black, 95.66% that you claim of their team being black, pretty close to a fair respresenation of the ratio don’t you think? Football is a game for all people, not just the higher class white clubs demonstrated in tennis, golf, cricket, swimming and rugby. To play football you don’t need your own private field of grass, pool, fairway or court. All you need is a ball!
        
        Lastly, what exactly is ‘black’, would you classify Steven Pienaar as being black?
        
        kovana said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:30pm | Report comment
        
        @ axel
        
        “higher class white clubs”
        
        Dude.. dont get sucked into that vortex..
        
        Remember us here in the Polynesian Triangle Love our Rugby… Its not a ELITIST sport as you always try and portray…
        
        Stop making baseless comments like that…
        
        Where im from. Soccer is for the rich kids..
        
        JF said | July 10th 2010 @ 1:41pm | Report comment
        
        Yes we get it Axel, football is simple, requires little equipment, can be played anywhere, is the most popular sport in every African nation including South Africa. I have no problem with any of this, just don’t tell me that Rugby “remains a pillar of the old apartheid regime” or that Rugby is not a popular game in South Africa – it is only follwed by whites, or that you must be rich and go to a private school to play Rugby.
      - Chris K said | July 10th 2010 @ 6:02pm | Report comment
        
        Err maybe because the springbok is actually animal
        
        Reply
  - Kurt said | July 10th 2010 @ 10:36pm | Report comment
    
    OK noted – I was just basing my observation on what I saw of the Sth African team at the WC which clearly was not the entire squad.
    
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Seiran said | July 10th 2010 @ 3:42am | Report comment

I just wasted two minutes of my life reading this rubbish. Does the author have a chip on his shoulder against rugby or white south africans?

Maybe if this article was written in 1991 it might have some basis, but in the modern South Africa rugby an inclusive sport supported and played by white and non-white South Africans.

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Chris K said | July 10th 2010 @ 4:04am | Report comment

This is such a poor article on so many levels. First of all Franklin are you South African, been to South Africa recently or lived there? If not how are you in a position to comment on this. I can tell you that I have and I can tell you that your more likely to find coloured/black rugby fans at your local rugby games over whites at local football games. Not to mention the make up of the springboks compared to the bafana bafana.

Secondly your implying that rugby in south africa still supports apartheid, this is obviously a subjective view and if it does in anyway that is because of it’s historical symbolism of the apartheid regime. If your suggesting that the SARU still segregates whites and blacks you are seriously mistaken. Thirdly I don’t know who is giving you your information on Danie Craven who apparently loved the aprtheid regime according to you but he was the one that actually went out of his way to meet leaders of the ANC and helped abolish whites only springbok teams despite backlash from many of the white population for doing so.

Fourthly, the reason rugby is considered the main sporting code in South Africa is because the Springboks are a dominant team that regulalrly wins international matches against competitive opposition. Same can’t be said for Bafana Bafana. Soccer is the most popular sport in South Africa but suggestions that rugby is more popular is hardly dribble. And I’m not sure who has been telling you that rugby is the dominant sport anyway, I’ve never heard anything of the sort.

And again, I’m not sure what you have seen to suggest that rugby in south africa hasn’t tried to confront it’s past, they’ve had to confront it on several occaisions and still are, mainly against people who still can’t get over the fact that the game used to be a symbol of apartheid. It may not have confronted it in a way some people had hoped but I think the growing number of blacks and coloureds that play the game as well as the growing appeal amongat the two cultures speaks for itself.

And lastly, for an article written on such a deep subject this is a pretty piss poor effort. You obviously don’t know what your talking about and just felt like bagging rugby union and if you knew anything really on the subject you would have written more than four short measley paragraphs on what is a pretty serious subject matter. And again how can you believe that just because the world cup is in town it somehow is proof that football is the only truly dominant sport in south Africa? If the world cup was in Australia most of the population would take part in the festivities surrounding the event but would that seriously mean that football is the most popular sport in Australia?

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M1tch said | July 10th 2010 @ 6:25am | Report comment

Soccer might be popular with most of the population, but it wont stop the crime in south africa.

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chris said | July 10th 2010 @ 6:58am | Report comment

I remember reading an article about in 20 years time Australian and New Zealand Rugby League and Union will be made up of over 50% players from a Polyonisan background and will be on par of how many black/mixed race players there are in the NFL.
I think 20-40 years time pro Rugby in South Africa will be at least 50% black.

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Altona Rebel said | July 10th 2010 @ 7:35am | Report comment

Mr black, Did you know more people in New Zealand play Soccer than Rugby? But Rugby is by far the Most Popular sport. So just because a sport is played by the Masses Does not make it the most popular. Also have you Attended a Soccer Match or Rugby Match in SA? If you had you would realize at a Rugby match the crowd is a mix of whites, Blacks, Coloured also Asians and Indians, A Soccer Match Is almost Completely Black except for a few Foreigners who sit away form the Black supports

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Midfielder said | July 10th 2010 @ 9:19am | Report comment

Franklin

So sad you wrote this…. while it may be obvious football is the more popular game with the black population in SA … you fail in any sense to understand the degree that SA rugby has gone to be part of the new SA … meaning part of black as well as white SA …

If you can help the process … please do so…

AR … bad reaction… there are many reasons football sits where it does in SA .. stadiums. skill, money etc … that is part of the reason FIFA took the game there… would also be helpful to assist the process..

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titus said | July 10th 2010 @ 9:51am | Report comment

Rugby has never pretended to be the ‘main sporting code’ in SA in terms of popularity in numbers. Where do you get your information from? The fairy that sits on that chip on your shoulder?

So what I get from this article is:
black population = supressed people = soccer = good
white afrikaan poplulation = oppressors = rugby = bad

How you can sum up the whole sporting landscape of football and rugby in 4 paragraphs, says a lot in so little.

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Working Class Rugger said | July 10th 2010 @ 10:01am | Report comment

Franklin

The SARU have been working hard on including Blacks in Rugby since the fall of apartheid. It hasn’t always gone smoothly but the intention is certainly there. Now, speaking to a South African recently ( he’s a Xhosa by the way and a Rugby fan) he updated me significantly on the state of SA Rugby. While the game is still king amongst the Whites it now has a very strong Coloured following and a substantial and no importantly growing Black base. In fact the SARU were pushing for an exclusively Black Eastern Cape team known as the Southern Kings to enter Super Rugby ( watch out for 2013, that’s there next opportunity). The only reason they didn’t was the new conference system being introduced next season.

This article is pure rubbish. I’m not a fan of either League or AFL and don’t actually enjoy Soccer as much as I once did but will that mean I’m going to write up such a poor and slanderous piece against one of the above. Next time you have the urge to vent try doing in a pre-existing thread so that we don’t have to waste time reading something that we could have simply bypassed.

Oh, and I believe you may be a bitter Black South African ex-pat who has likely since left the Republic and believes that they are now entitled to vent frustrations against a regime that has long since pasted.

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