Johannesburg - The decision to make the Springboks play in a teal kit rather than the traditional green and gold – as a clarion call for the colour blind – is as intriguing as it is irritating. It’s an edict of World Rugby, an old boys’ club that is traditionally as woke as HF Verwoerd.
Colour blindness seems like an odd hill to die on, when you think that only 300-million people in the world suffer from it. Put another way, that’s one in 12 men and one in 200 women. The colours that are the most problematic are apparently red and green, which would be an issue when we play Wales, the Lions (not the Ellis Park ones) and Tonga. Even if it was a problem, that’s why teams have had alternative strips, which for most countries has been white, to create an obvious and fair contrast for the opposing team.
But obviously colour blindness, rather than people living in extreme poverty (719-million) or those with disabilities (of whom there are 1,3-billion), is more important at HQ. Many fans believe rugby’s ossified hierarchy labour under a disability, mostly cognitive, while some of the refs definitely have vision issues. But here we are, notwithstanding the fact that it’s almost impossible to tell teams apart in the northern hemisphere when they play on fields muddied by rain and sleet – or the fact that for years, the BBC broadcast games in black and white before introducing colour in the mid-70s. Go back further and there wasn’t even a picture, just the voices of radio commentators.
What’s been most fascinating has been the general lack of conspiracy theories. The flat earthers and anti-vaxxers haven’t been able to shut up between the sinking of the Titanic, the moon landings and the COVID-19 lockdown and yet over a strip that looks suspiciously the same colour as the bags that Checkers packs its groceries in and dresses its delivery bikers, nary a peep. The peerless business journalist, Tim Cohen, wondered this week about the role of sponsors – and their affinity to a colour we’re more used to seeing on a Griqua rugby jersey than ever on the much storeyed national side. Whatever the case, it’s a marketing godsend for Checkers.
The best reaction has been from the players themselves; they’re so stoked to be in France they’d probably play in plastic supermarket bags if it meant getting onto the field and representing their country. It’s good news for the fans too, most of whom can’t even get close to affording a replica jersey that’s the price of several Sassa grants in one; a couple of clevers have even been modelling shopping bags as jerseys, shorts and hats. In the end it probably doesn’t matter. If the Boks can put 60 past Romania in sixty minutes tomorrow and bring the cup home come the end of October, who cares?
As for red and green lights, Rassie’s grandstand antics apart, we are already ahead of the rest of the world, thanks to Eskom.
Maybe world rugby should give us an exemption for that?