THE FORMER South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) unveiled their now maligned Development Programme amid the howls of a near gale-force southeaster almost 20 years ago.

Newlands B, or the site on which the Sport Science Institute now towers, provided the platform from which Sas Bailey, the first manager of the Development Programme, announced that more than R2-million would be pumped into the game, with the then scarcely used "at grassroots level" mantra as primary focus.

The hopes of players and administrators who had just taken a leap of faith to dine at the game's hitherto forbidden top table rested squarely on the success of the programme.

A R2-million starter pack in the early 1990s represented a hefty projectile to throw at a problem that persists to this day.

Black administrators from that era, it is often claimed, extended a hand of friendship to white counterparts who only had the restoration of the Springbok in the world order as their primary concern.

As premature babies go, unification resulted in stunted development. A succession of Saru blazers tackled the issue - if only their pre-election gusto matched their delivery.

One of the problems rugby administrators grapple with is how to quantify success. Generally speaking most folks look at the Springbok team as their transformation barometer, while the make-up of provincial teams is also a yardstick.

The obvious danger, however, is too much focus on the destination of developing players obscures the pitfalls they encounter on the road there.

Brendan Venter, the erudite former Bok centre, touched on the subject in his column in a Cape Town paper on Friday. He lamented that provinces don't set additional time aside to boost the skills of black players who require it.

He also warned of the reaction government might have once they come to realise that rugby bosses are ill equipped to deal with a problem which in many ways mirrors the shortcomings of South African society at large.

Can the sport really transform if getting on the right side of the breadline and not the gain line, is the instinct that drives the bulk of the country's inhabitants?

Saru should not see that as an escape clause but embrace it as a challenge, to remedy as best they can.

They may point to government's decision to scrap physical education from the school curriculum as a debilitating factor but perhaps they should first look within, and rid their provincial boardrooms of dyed- in-the-wool racists before the game can be truly transformed.