The national rugby team of South Africa took time out to hold a clinic for schoolchildren, an event that was part instructional and part outreach to a group that is still becoming aware of the team and its successes. The full article can be read at http://www.themercury.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=nw20090803175415554C637679, with an excerpt below.

(Excerpt)

Coaching clinic brings Boks to the people

August 3, 2009

Springbok coach Peter de Villiers says his team’s presence in Wellington on Monday for a coaching clinic was about “taking the game to the people” in an effort to unite South African society.

The Boks received a rapturous welcome from over 5 000 schoolchildren and others at the Boland Stadium and took part in a coaching clinic, which was conducted in conjunction with the South African Rugby Legends. The Boks are in Cape Town ahead of Saturday’s Tri-Nations Test against Australia at Newlands.

“This is exactly what we wanted to achieve by bringing the Springboks here for the coaching clinic. Our goal is to unite the country and make the people happy, and to take the game to the people. Today surpassed all our expectations, to see this kind of response to us,” said De Villiers yesterday.

“Our goal was always to bring the game back to the community and it is a great privilege for us to be here. It was very seldom that such a thing was done in the past. We were actually strangers in our own country, and our people were hidden away and wrapped up in cotton wool. We never mixed with the people. “I think that, with events like these, people will realise that we are also people. And that will be great for our country.”