What can I do to change the face of rugby or the way it is played in South Africa? I was recently asked this very question and it took me months to figure it out – after all, I am just a normal Joe Soap who is a passionate supporter of the game of rugby as millions of South Africans are.
The strange thing for me though is the fact that I am never short of an opinion on the on-goings in South African rugby, but like a wise man once said, an opinion is like buttocks, everyone has one.
So just how can the average Joe change the rugby in South Africa? Well, it took me a while to figure it out, but I think I may have found the answer. But I wanted to write something that is not only ideas and opinions. I wanted to write something that brings a message across. A message to the guys that started this concept, a message to people who have registered and read this website, and a message to people still deciding whether to join or not.
SARSU is mostly about giving the guy on the street a chance to contribute to the game we love other than just writing or commenting on a website – and I wanted to capture that as the essence of the article. Whenever I started writing I mostly found myself thinking halfway through the article: “But that’s been said before, what is the use I mention it again?” It is not my intention to motivate people to take this organisation further or higher, but rather my intention to make people realize the responsibility they took on for themselves in making the ideals and dreams of SARSU a reality.
You see having had first hand experience on how jaded and faded ideals becomes over time, I wanted to somehow warn everyone not to lose perspective on why this was started in the first place, and possibly help identify the reasons we lose as time goes on. I thought a lot of why things change with time, how relationships sour and how personal ideals or perceptions takes preference to the cause of the project or organisation – it was a struggle to figure this out because it also meant I had to face a few realities in doing so. Needless to say, it took me a long time to get to grips with it, and one day, as if someone switched a light on in my head, I figured it out.
Most of us grew up knowing the game of rugby. It was something passed down from parents and brothers, played as kids in the garden, watching Currie Cup and test matches on TV and listening to it on the radio and nagging your mom to knit you your favourite province's jersey so you can represent them when playing against friends and brothers. It was a way of life. It was something we inherited. It is part of our lives. The thing about inheriting something though is that people sometimes struggle to treat it as your own, to take ownership and responsibility for this love and passion and most importantly, identify with it.
The other dangerous part of inheriting something like the game of rugby is that you get the good – with the bad. Rugby is a powerful thing, always has been always will be. We saw in the past the game of rugby being used as a tool. A tool the international community used to ban us from the game, a tool the government used to discriminate against black and coloured people, and today a tool, yet again, used to fight battles in environments that have nothing to do with the game of rugby. And make no mistake rugby is a very powerful tool.
It then dawned on me that the most important people in rugby, the players, coaches, administrators and fans, almost never use rugby as a tool, but more as an escape of sorts – and this is where we allow, or not allow, the game of rugby to become a powerful tool of life. Many people make a living out of rugby in the professional era, but very few people make rugby their life, and this is what I realized we must do if we are serious about taking the game back from those people that use it as a tool against the very same people that love the game. I am not suggesting for one second we should start a war against anyone, but I am suggesting that people, you, start looking at rugby as a passionate supporter, and realize that this game we love and have so much passion for, should become a game that spreads love and passion to other individuals that is not part of this family.
Rugby to many is a game that is played in a funny rectangle, with lots of lines and with a funny shaped ball – Rugby should be a vehicle and tool we can use to change perceptions about one another, to give hope to those who have little, and to make people understand alone one will accomplish very little, but together you can perform miracles. We spend a lot of time as individuals commentating and giving opinions on how things should be or should work, not only in rugby but also in life. The problem with that though is that you never really accomplish anything, as a person or to the game itself.
Many of us dreamt or still dream of becoming a Springbok, as a player or as a something else perhaps, but because that time has come and gone for most of us, we put our faith and trust in other individuals to carry that dream forward on our behalf – but essentially we give them nothing to really go out and succeed in something we did not. You see, the way I see it is that the goal or final destination is not reaching that point where you pull a jersey over your head, it is the journey that took you there or the journey and road you travelled with people that got there or will get there.
If this wonderful concept is one day going to work and reach the heights many wish for, we should stop being scared of what we love - we should start taking ownership and responsibility for this special gift or game handed down to us by our fathers and their fathers. We should use rugby as a tool not only to make our own dreams come true but to create dreams for those who have none. And that also applies to all of us, South Africans, who are currently residing in Countries all over the World. I am currently in Namibia. My passion for rugby, my rugby thoughts, my rugby disappointments and my rugby ecstasies, however, are in South Africa. With SA Rugby from the little ones playing “Bulletjies” rugby right through to the Springboks. The fact that I am in Namibia does not make me forget my responsibility to contribute towards the continuous growth of rugby, at all levels, in my country of birth, South Africa.
Rugby is not only a game for us, it is a way of life – but let’s start using our respective gifts to help define life through this great game we call rugby. How? Well it might be in its infancy and it might be an impossible dream for a passionate few, but you, the average Joe, may as well visit SARSU’s website (www.sarsu.org), see what these guys have to say and what they are trying to do, and then like me, possibly make your opinions count for something for a change.
Morne Nortier is a member of the SARSU Management Committee and resides in Windhoek, Namibia. Web address: http://www.sarsu.org
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