Greetings from South Africa
by Ben Darwin | 12 March 2010 (10:09)
I am currently staying in Cape Town this week for a wedding and have been struck again by the beauty of the place as well as the effort put into preparation for the FIFA World Cup. Although it seems, much like every major tournament around the world, the efforts are being done all very last minute to get the event over the line.
With the attention that comes from a World Cup, much has been made of whether having such a tournament would negatively effect rugby in South Africa. From my perspective, these events very rarely change the fundamental sporting culture of a country.
Let’s look at some previous examples.
The 1994 FIFA World Cup held in the U.S. gave a boost to the game and Major League Soccer, yet failed to make a dent in the big 4 codes of that country ¬¬i.e. baseball, hockey, NFL and basketball. These monsters require massive funds to overhaul and not even the signing of David Beckham has managed to make too much noise outside of the Los Angeles social and sports pages
In 2000, the United Kingdom was host to the Rugby League World Cup. Yet despite a push into the London region, this code of football failed to ignite or grow beyond its traditional reach in Northern England
Sports that are ingrained within a society continue to do so if they are played in schools and become part of the social fabric. One-off sporting events serve as a flash in the pan but without a fundamental roll out deep into the community, it is not possible to change the nature of a society.
As a side note, a mistake often made is to think that a team or sport will be successful in the short term in an area that has held a major sporting event to which large crowds were attracted. Basketball and baseball have been guilty of this in Australia.
The positives to come out of the upcoming soccer world cup include extensive upgrades to the current stadia as well as new stadia being built, new transport systems implemented and the general profile of sport rising. In fact, one of the greatest profiteers from the 2000 Sydney Olympics was the Australian Rugby Union. In the years leading up to the Games, the new stadium built in Sydney increased the crowd capacity from 40,000 to 110,000, with Bledisloe Tests now, a decade on, comfortably filling the coffers.
Hopefully an improved perspective on tourism in South Africa will also be gained as intense fear about crime in South Africa, whether it is right or wrong, still exists among foreigners outside of the country.
In the long term, there are definite benefits for South Africa holding the 2010 FIFA World Cup – for both the country and its rugby.
