A South African rugby league?

The world's attention is focused on the World Cup in South Africa where there is still a great divide in sport between Football and Rugby with football being supported by the black South Africans and Rugby by the whites a bit like the lesse known divide amongst pet ownership with cats being kept in the black communities and dogs by the whites with exceptions.

The film Invictus showed how Nelson Mandela used the Springboks to try and bridge divisions in the Ruby world cup.

However given the prominence of Rugby as the White man's sport suppose a Rugby league had been established in the black townships. Rugby League and Rugby Union had a different type of apartheid in Britain with Rugby league developing in working class areas around the Lancashire , Yorkshire and Cumbrian mining areas as a working mans sport that compensated the players from loss of earnings whilst Rugby Union was the public school sport for gentlemen. For some reason or other probably because the rules on payment were bent Rugby Union became a mass sport in South Wales.

The legendary mixed race Rugby League international Billy Boston born in Tiger Bay was socially ostracised on return to South Wales for playing league. The division have gone but could a Rugby league have developed amongst black South Africans as an alternative to the white Rugby Union?
 
^ It's possible, but I'd call it unlikely. The vast majority of black South Africans were soccer fans and started playing that game when they were kids. You're better bet under the old apartheid system is to have the Rubgy League start up among the coloreds, who DID play Rugby regularly, but got shut out of South African teams because of their skin color. After apartheid, you may be able to get black players into rugby that way.
 
The world's attention is focused on the World Cup in South Africa where there is still a great divide in sport between Football and Rugby with football being supported by the black South Africans and Rugby by the whites a bit like the lesse known divide amongst pet ownership with cats being kept in the black communities and dogs by the whites with exceptions.

What? That's crap dude. I have never heard that before. And many blacks still have quite intense superstitious beliefs about cats. My mother took my cat to the vet a couple of months ago. While she was walking down the road, on her way to the vet, with the cat in a cage, a number of black people crossed the road to avoid being close to the cat.

But, going back to your other point, there was always been a strong black rugby culture in the Eastern and Western Cape. If this could be developed somehow, we may see a stronger black presence in the Springboks.

It's still terrible that the number of black Africans in the Springbok side, as opposed to people of mixed race descent is still so small. The only African who is anything close to being a Springbok regular is Tendai 'The Beast' Mtawararira. And he's a Zimbabwean immigrant.

Getting rugby league to be big among black communities is a bit more of a challenge, if it can be 'marketed' as an anti-Afrikaner/rugby union game, you may have a shot.

But as TheMann says soccer has always been numero uno among black South Africans.
 
Top