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South Africa, Sport

SA Women’s Hong Kong Sevens win a bittersweet reminder of crushed Olympic dreams

SA Women’s Hong Kong Sevens win a bittersweet reminder of crushed Olympic dreams

The SA Select Women’s Sevens team became the first ever South African side to win a trophy in Hong Kong. But the win came with the bittersweet reminder that for all their improvement on the field recently, they will have to watch the Olympics from home. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.

On Friday, the SA Select Women’s Sevens team did what no South African team has managed to do in Hong Kong before: they won a trophy. South Africa beat France 14-7 to clinch the title and showed great improvement from having lost against Kazakhstan in pool play on Thursday.

For coach Renfred Dazel, the win must have offered some vindication. During the pool stages of the tournament in Hong Kong, South Africa beat Kenya 32-0. While keeping a clean sheet in Sevens is impressive enough, that their biggest win of the tournament came against the team that will take their place at the Rio Olympics later this year is significant.

I told the girls they have achieved what no other SA team could do and that they can really be proud of themselves. This is also an important win for a lot of people at SA Rugby, as they work very hard behind the scenes to prepare the team. I am sure this victory will also lift the confidence and the profile of our team,” says Dazel.

The South African women’s team has had to battle bureaucracy for the last few months – all too familiar for South Africa’s athletes. Despite meeting the requirements for qualification for the 2016 Rio Olympics, according to the International Olympic Committee’s standards, they did not meet the standards of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee.

They did not qualify through the World Series, but did win the Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens Olympic Qualifier in September. In this tournament, the women won all six of their matches, notched up 265 points and conceded just one try. If there was ever a statement screaming that they are the best women’s sevens team on the continent, that was it, but it was not good enough for Sascoc. Like the men and women’s hockey teams, who also triumphed at the continental qualifier, they will have to watch the Olympics from home and that is a damn shame. It’s also a massive setback for women’s sport in the country.

While one tournament win does not make a team, their efforts in Hong Kong show that they not only have the nerve, but the ability to push for a medal, something Sascoc did not seem to think they were capable of. According to Sascoc’s qualification criteria, the Blitzboks would have had to finish in the top four of the Women’s World Series last season. They finished 12th out of 13 teams, something critics would say is proof enough that they simply aren’t good enough to make the cut, but that’s missing the point.

First, Sevens is one of those freakish formats in which anything can happen and athletes often perform beyond their merits on the Olympic stage. And while women’s rugby in South Africa is still far behind some other countries, the improvement in these players from a group of rag tag amateurs to professionals in just two years is astounding.

Two years ago, women’s rugby was lagging behind in South Africa and, for all of the faults the South African Rugby Union (Saru) has, their decision to pump money into the women’s game should be commended. To have built a professional team from virtually nothing took an exceptional effort and to have that laid to waste by Sascoc’s stubbornness must be incredibly frustrating for all those who have worked so hard to build the side from the ground up.

While there is nothing wrong with high standards and wanting only the best athletes to compete, when it comes to the Olympics, it is about more than that. The Olympics, in essence, is about guts, perseverance and opportunity. The Olympics is about representation, and representation of women’s sport – both at elite level and in the media – is so critical for further nurturing the love of a game still considered by many to be “for men”.

When South Africa clinched the qualifier in September last year, optimists hoped that maybe a few good folk would fight in their corner. Some hoped that Mark Alexander, a suit with a finger in a Sascoc and Saru pie, might fight for the women to get a chance. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, Saru sent out a press release after their offices closed for the December holidays. That was that.

But there is a more pertinent point which is most jarring. While Saru and Sascoc like to bang the transformation drum, their decision to sideline the Women’s Sevens is effectively sidelining transformation.

The South African women’s sevens team is one of the most transformed teams in South Africa and they consistently field what many would consider a fully representative team at international level. And that team is winning.

At senior level, the women’s team has consistently fielded a 50% transformed team. At Under-21 international level, that figure has often jumped to 68% while at provincial level, more than 60% of players are black. These are figures very few other sporting bodies can boast with and while Sascoc can be as stubborn as they like, that Saru did not fight harder for a team so representative sends a rather confusing message when they bang on about transformation no end.

That Sascoc and Saru have denied a team that has worked so hard for recognition an opportunity to represent the country at the Olympics is not only cruel, it is also short-sighted. Because transformation is not just about numbers on the field. It is about access to opportunities, and there is arguably no bigger opportunity than the Olympic stage.

Through this short-sightedness, Sascoc denied the dreams of a group of women who could have gone on to inspire a whole new generation of players. The two bodies have halted the further development of their own athletes by denying them a critical opportunity, making the historic win in Hong Kong a bitter pill to swallow. DM

Photo: The SA Select Women’s Sevens team from 2014 (Photo by blitzbokke.com)

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