Since re admission South Africa has been rather successful on the sporting arena. Particularly in Golf, Rugby and Cricket. We are a nation who loves to compete, and we hate losing. In fact it is fair to say that we are very often poor losers, case in point this year’s Tri Nations. PDV blames it on conspiracy theories, some of us blame it on the coach and the world plus a few objective Springbok supporters blame it on the ultimate outdated game plan.

The question however remains, what is success and how do we perceive success.

Golf

 More often than not during the past 16 years, we have boasted 5 professional golfers in the top 50 on the golf world rankings.

During this time we have had numerous successes, have a look at the achievements our golfers have had in the last 16 years.

Ernie Els has won the US Open in 1994 and 1997, his third major came at the British Open in 2002, and in total he has won  62 professional tournaments of which 18 wins came in the USA and 25 in Europe. He has also won the World Match play in various reincarnations 4 times.

Reitief Goosen has won the US Open in 2001 and 2004 and has a total career wins of 44 winning in the USA 7 times and 14 times in Europe.

Trevor Immelman has won the Master in 2008 and boasts a total of 10 career wins.

We can still add many more golfers from SA who has been very successful during this time.

Cricket

The Proteas has the second best win/loss ratio in test cricket since re admission, winning 1.86 tests per loss, only Australia has a better record. In fact since 2007 South Africa has only lost one test series to Australia on their return after winning their series in Australia. As a One day limited side South Africa once again has the second most successful record and a record uncanny similar than their test record winning 1.83 matches per loss. Even in T20 matches South Africa has the second best winning ratio with 1.75 wins per loss. There is daylight between the Proteas and the third placed teams in each of these disciplines.

Rugby

Since Re admission the Springboks have won the Rugby World Cup in 1995 and 2007, we have also added three Tri Nation Trophies in 1998, 2004 and 2009. During this time we have won 63.13% of our tests, which puts us anywhere between 2nd and 5th^h on the win percentage record depending on which date you select as a starting point, with Australia, France and England vying with us for that second place.

Conundrum

I want to make this comparison, Tim Clark is known as one of those golfers who is small of stature and is often thought of as someone who doesn’t have the physique to win major golfing tournaments, and even though that may be true, no one can deny the fact that he has been very successful in his career with 11 professional career wins and career earnings in excess of 20 million USD. Yet we measure our golfers by Gary Player and Ernie Els. By comparison the South African cricket team has been undeniably the second best team in the last 16 odd years even though they have yet to win an ICC tournament. The Proteas are commonly referred to as the “chokers” of world cricket and has recently made the 2^nd place in an all time chokers list, just behind the All Black rugby team.

On the other hand the Springbok rugby team has won 5 trophies in the last 16 odd years, but has consistently failed to impress. There were years such as 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2010 where we had a win ratio of 50% or less. Yet we believe in our hearts that we should be the best rugby team in the world. We wear our hearts on our sleeves and often the first direction we point when we lose, is the coach, selections etc.

The fact is there are more money in rugby in this country than any other sport, our cricket team is fed from only 6 Franchises, not only that, but as far as development is concerned, they have shown the way towards a multicultural team and has performed more consistent than our beloved Springboks.

My question is this, is our rugby system and administrators an antiquated system, outdated, and a law onto themselves, are they more concerned about their own careers and pockets and there for greater than the game it self?

Have they in any way whatsoever even been serious about transformation?

Do we as supporters only measure success by the number of trophies in the cabinet?

The picture is becoming clear to me, SARU has not achieved half of what our cricket counterparts have achieved over the last 16 odd years, and despite the number of trophies the Springboks have amassed during this time, perhaps we need to set our measure of success on consistency, the correct way of transformation and not only on the number of trophies collecting dust in Capetown.