‘Be open about transformation’

Former Springbok assistant coach Gary Gold says there should be greater transparency when it comes to the subject of transformation in South African rugby.

Speaking on a podcast for AllOutRugby.com, Gold said there shouldn't be a need to 'shy away from the fact that there’s a need for transformation in South Africa'.

'If you take the business analogy … with BEE [Black Economic Empowerment] … why don’t we do the same in sport, so everybody knows where they stand?

'It’s a frustration for coaches … we haven’t been given strict guidelines, it’s more a situation of – once a team has been selected – we’ll get a comeback from the [union] president or the government who will say you need to rectify this, or this individual needs to be in the team, and that’s counterproductive and disruptive.'

Meanwhile, fellow former Bok assistant coach Alan Solomons identified certain oversights in terms of the development pathway for young coaches in South African rugby.

'When I served as the Kings’ director of rugby, from early on we targeted Mzwandile Stick as a future coach,' he wrote in a column. 'We started Stick on that pathway and got him involved. He subsequently won the U19 Currie Cup title with Eastern Province in 2015 and was named as a Springbok assistant coach in 2016.

'SA Rugby pushed him too quickly into the senior national side and he didn’t have the requisite depth of experience. We had a pathway planned for him through the ranks and our objective was to develop promising young black coaches like Stick.'

Full column

Photo: Sabelo Mngoma/BackpagePix

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