Maori Game Back On
From news reports it looks like the Maori-Boks game is back on.
On the sporting front, what could be better than the Boks fronting up to the Maori challenge at Soweto* in a 120,000 seater stadium.
The original problem was that the South African teams were not allowed to play against teams selected on racial grounds.
The solution is admirably simple yet sensible:
The instruction came after SARU’s council accepted a recommendation from the management committee that the union should “accept matches against any teams sanctioned by the national governing body of that team”.
There is of course a certain irony.
As recently as 1970, New Zealand was prepared to accept sending a whites only All Black team.
Yet here we are nearly 40 years later aching to send a Maori-only team to South Africa.
The last word: for a long time, I thought that Soweto must have had some cultural meaning or significance … it had to be native word of some standing.
Imagine my disappointment when I found out that Soweto was actually short for South Western Township. Not a Zulu word as far as I can tell.
