O’Sullivan: Where does Bok glory begin? Craven Week, U20 not a prerequisite.

By David O’Sullivan

david-osullivan
David O’Sullivan

This starts out as a column about football, but it morphs into rugby.

I was a reporter at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, hunting in a pack with fellow journalists Andy Capostagno and the late George Koertzen. The final weekend of the Games had arrived and the only event left of interest to South Africans was the marathon on the final Sunday (and glory for Josia Thugwane). So, to kill time on the Saturday, we headed to the nearby town of Athens to watch the football final between Nigeria and Argentina.

We weren’t real football fans but Andy persuaded us to go to the hometown of the American rock band R.E.M and look for Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods whose motto inspired the title of R.E.M’s best-known album “Automatic for the People”. To date it’s the only time I’ve had a rock ‘n roll reason to watch sport, but it resulted in us being swept up in one of the most glorious of celebrations as Nigeria beat Argentina 3-2 in the final minutes of a famous match. We didn’t find Weaver D’s.

Because only u23 players can compete at an Olympic Games (though three over-age players are also permitted), most Olympic footballers are relative unknowns at the start of their careers. At the time, none of the young players’ names meant anything to me, and 20 years later I had no memory of them. So I thought I would look them up. So did we see any future superstars?

Absolutely! We saw 20-year old Nwankwo Kanu captaining the Nigeria Olympic side. He was then a precocious upstart at PSV and would go on to become a stalwart for Arsenal, West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth. We saw 23-year old Jay Jay Okocha, who plied his trade all over Europe for 18 years, and 17-year old Celestine Babayaro who had an 8-year long career at Chelsea.

We saw 22-year old Javier Zanetti who would go on to captain Argentina and play an incredible 858 games for Inter Milan (where he was nicknamed El Tractor) and 142 for Argentina. We saw 23-year old Roberto Ayala who would play 115 times for his country. We saw 21-year old Hernán Crespo who would become the third top goal-scorer for Argentina, behind the great Batistuta and Messi.

Rugby_SA

We saw some of the future stars of world football. I should have paid more attention. Every player in the 18-man strong Argentina squad played for their country at a senior level. Only one Nigerian failed to make it at a senior international level.

Here’s where the column morphs into rugby. South Africa’s u20 side had a topsy-turvy time at the 2016 Rugby Championship in Manchester, winning just two of their five games to finish fourth. I wondered if this team would give us an indication of the state of SA rugby a few years from now. Given the low attrition rate in the 1996 Olympic teams from u23 to senior international football, what’s the attrition rate like in South African rugby from u20 to senior international rugby? It was a simple if arduous exercise – getting the squads for the u20 World Championship since the tournament began in 2008 and ploughing through the names. For the sake of comparison, I did the same exercise for New Zealand.

In 2008, 26 players represented South Africa. 2 played for the Springboks (Francois Hougaard and Lionel Mapoe). 24 players represented New Zealand, 5 played for the All Blacks (Ash Dixon, Ben Afeaki, Sam Whitelock, Ryan Crotty and Aaron Smith).

In 2009, both teams produced four international players. Three South Africans played for the Springboks (Julian Redelinghuys, Coenie Oosthuizen and Rudy Paige), while one played for Ireland (CJ Stander). The All Blacks who emerged from that team were Elliot Dixon, Aaron Cruden, Tom Taylor and Zac Guildford.

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The class of 2010 produced five Springboks (Siya Kolisi, Elton Jantjies, Pat Lambie, Jaco Taute and Marcel van der Merwe) and one Irish international (CJ Stander, who also captained the side). S’bura Sithole was called up to a Springbok camp. The New Zealand u20 team produced four All Blacks (Luke Whitelock, Charlie Ngatai, Julian Savea and Tawera Kerr-Barlow).

In 2011, seven South African u20 players made the leap to Test rugby (Eben Etzebeth, Siya Kolisi, Johan Goosen, Jaco Taute, Bongi Mbonambi, Arno Botha and Nizaam Carr), while 13 New Zealanders became All Blacks.

2012 was a lean time for the New Zealanders with just two players making the transition to Test rugby, while four South Africans made the grade (Steven Kitshoff, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Handre Pollard and Jan Serfontein).

In 2013, both South Africa and New Zealand’s u20 sides produced two Test players (Pollard and Jesse Kriel for the Springboks, Ardie Savea and Patrick Tuipulotu for the All Blacks).

Players in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 squads are still establishing themselves and there’s every likelihood that some of them will one day become Test players, so I won’t throw them into the mix just yet.

Read also: What next for the Boks as the Rugby Championship looms?

So what do the stats tell us? Well, I was hoping that they would show that the u20 Rugby Championship, like the Olympics, is the launch pad for international success. But that’s only true for a handful of players each year. Clearly getting u20 colours isn’t the automatic stepping stone to Test glory.

There might have been a criticism that the attrition rate indicates that too many young South African players fall through the cracks and aren’t sufficiently guided to international success later in their careers. But that attrition rate is roughly the same as New Zealand’s. There’s nothing unusual about the South African experience compared with that of New Zealand. If we’re getting something wrong, then so too are the New Zealanders.

A much longer column would have allowed analysis of how many players from the younger ranks go on to play provincial rugby or Super Rugby, and a cursory examination of the data shows that almost all go on to the next level.

If anything, u20 rugby in South Africa is identifying the talent of the future. But for those players who don’t make the grade at that age, all is not lost. Neither is a good school or Craven Week selection a guarantee of success. Ollie Keohane, writing for SA Rugby magazine, found that you don’t have to attend a fashionable rugby school, or play Craven Week rugby, to become a Springbok. As Ollie’s research shows Craven Week selection is a beginning to a schoolboy’s career. But non-selection is not the end of a schoolboy’s dream to play Springbok rugby. The same is true of the u20 experience.

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