Sedick Crombie
Cape Town - On June18, we were glued to our television sets, witnessing an epic upset in a game of rugby between archrivals, the Stormers against the Blue Bulls.
It was a game in which guts and glory by a Stormers team from down South triumphed over a much-vaunted and hyped-up team from up North, the Blue Bells. It was what was traditionally called the North and South rivalry.
What was supposed to be a memorable occasion here down South is being used as a stick to hit out at the union’s administrators, via an article by Mike Greenaway on June 21, 2022.
It is grossly inappropriate and despicable to play domestic politics in a manner that detracts from the euphoria of a groundbreaking victory.
The writer stoops even lower by attributing the victory solely to the presence of one man, John Dobson. How deplorable!
The scribe goes as far to offer the CV of the coach as the only measuring tool of why the Stormers were victorious.
He mentions non-racialism as if it were the litmus test that allows us to revere the coach, but he glibly uses incorrect information.
The Northerns RFC, he mentions, plied their trade at Avonwood Park during Dobson’s playing days and were never a non-racial outfit.
On the contrary, they were ensconced in Cuthbert Loriston’s racial union which plied their trade in Danie Craven’s apartheid stable, where coloureds played against coloureds and Blacks against Blacks. Non-racialism was the domain of the South African Rugby Union of Abdullah Abbas. Some analytical research would have borne this out, but we know some reporters do not let facts get in the way of a juicy story. A failure to research and second guessing is soddy journalism.
John Dobson is a good guy and needs to be commended for his application and stitching together of a team that seemed as if it could come loose at the seams early in the season. He stuck to several players, some little known and others with bucket loads of potential.
He is one of a handful of coaches who has placed trust in players of colour, especially those in pivotal roles.
Dobson should be lauded for his bold move in sticking with his players, despite being lynched by some of the selfsame journalists who would rather focus on what transpired on the periphery at the union, than the aura of the victory.
When the likes of Siya Kolisi and Bongi Mbonambi left the union, the reporters screamed sacrilege.
When the administration did not succumb to sell the union’s family silverware for the proverbial two mules and 40 acres, they shouted incompetence and encouraged factionalism by pitting one group against another in the media.
When the union eventually fractured to such an extent it upped the ante and, spurred on by its backers and powerful financial interests, clamoured for intervention and to place the union under administration.
It did not take long for a pliant national body, which eagerly waited in the wings, to institute the set agenda.
And, voila, the hostile takeover of the union took off without a whimper and the embedded journalists had their mission accomplished.
WP Rugby union will go into the professional era unfettered despite the clubs, the real owners, not having knowledge about what is to occur, or so it was thought.
Today, WP Union, supposedly a team of no-hopers, a team no pundit or scribe would have betted a nickel or dime on, sits with the silverware it won.
This is a team whose make-up consists of the demographic of the Western Cape, another first for the country. Plaudits for the defiled administrators and its coach would not be out of order.
This is a team who are more fully transformed than any other in the country, one which consists of, dare I say it, “quotas’, a reviled tag used whenever a team loses.
The congratulations and euphoria should be levelled at the team and its complement of coaching staff, not an individual.
But, alas, the writer of the article probably cannot stomach that this was a team who did not follow the script and, in fact, tore it up on the way to winning an international competition in front of an international audience of millions.
No, the writer must throw a low blow and take a dig at its administration. Does one have to remind the writer that it is the selfsame administration that he savagely criticises, which extended Dobson’s contract as coach after his “iffy” record of the past few seasons?
Was it not the same administrators, which he lambastes, who managed to ensure some of the players remained at the Union?
But no, we are being bombarded with Dobson’s CV as the only criterion that ensured success. How disingenuous, to say the least! The article heaping all the praise on one man and pouring scorn on all the other is reminiscent of a “Tarzan” (sans flowing locks in this case) movie where the hero comes to save the tribe from the evil and ignorant chieftains. It is so Rambo, so colonialist.
Journalism and journalists, or so we believed, have been even-handed, meritorious and objective, allowing the reader to make up their mind about the merits of what is being presented.
It seems that the falling standards that our society are being challenged with have not escaped this vestige. It has become the arena of the embedded scribe, a one-sided derogatory argument and the taking of personal digs at those who cannot use the same medium to offer a counternarrative.
The subtle nuances, biassed writing, subliminal anger at what should not have been, are evident in the article. The writer would have done well to show a little more humility, praise where praise is due and where victory triumphed over adversity. In the end, the clowns had the last laugh over the ringmaster and henchmen.
Crombie is the media and publicity secretary of the Saru Sacos Legends. He writes in his personal capacity.
Cape Times