George Malgas, the president of the Eastern Province Rugby Union (EPRU), hit back against allegations of selection interference in an interview with “The Herald”.
The row erupted after the "Grant Khomo Management" group, responsible for the Under-16 provincial squad, threatened to resign. They alleged that names were added to the official national youth weeks squads after selectors had already finalised their merit-based teams.
The coaching management alleged that undue pressure was placed on the union to alter squad selections to artificially increase the representation of players from underprivileged backgrounds.
“If the inclusion of those children means that certain coaches and administrators will resign in protest of this inclusion of those children, then it is a rather unfortunate situation," Malgas said.
President Malgas strongly defended the changes. He stated that the union did the right thing by ensuring teams are fully representative of all areas in the region, particularly previously disadvantaged communities.
“I stand by what we did and how we came to it.”
EP Rugby’s general manager, Mzi Mpofu, said: “We have a responsibility to ensure that youth representative teams are a reflection of the whole community that falls under the auspices of EPRU.”
“We cannot watch silently as children from disadvantaged and rural communities are systematically deprived of opportunities.”
Malgas said that the added names were not simply "thumb-sucked" by executives but were actively proposed by selectors.
“It became apparent to us that there were a lot of people who were in conflict with each other regarding the teams that were going to represent EP.”
“We received a list of the proposed players from the selectors last Thursday, and we scrutinised the list, and we discovered the list is not representative of EP’s demographics.”
“The team was largely made up of players from the NMB Metro, comprising three or four schools, and two schools from the Makhanda area.”
“We were not happy to accept this list.”
“It had not made any provision for players from the previously disadvantaged areas.”
“We requested the selectors to go back and find players who came through the system at the trials and/or at the Mali tournament.”
“The next morning, there were three names brought to us, and those named were not meant to be brought into the mix as intended by ourselves, but according to the selectors, they had to be added into the group.”
“That would make our group not be in line with SA Rugby’s regulations regarding the sizes of the groups.”
“We then had an engagement with the selectors and asked them once again to wrap their heads around it.”
“We came up with the name of one boy only from out of town that could be brought into the team.”
“EP brought that boy in on the advice of the selectors and on merit as such.”
“We also brought in a second boy whose name was put on the table from the townships and an extra one for the standby list.”
“All these names were forwarded to us by the selectors.”
“We had no issues with the EP U13 and EP girls’ teams, which were fine and were signed off.”
“All the additional names were proposed by the selectors and discussed in a meeting.”
“I want to reiterate those names were given to us and not thumb-sucked by us.”