The announcement of the Springbok World Cup squad was the catalyst for the latest round of polemy in response to our ever-present transformation issue. This specific instance highlighted again the apparent lack of consistent long-term planning in how an admittedly clumsy strategy should be implemented. Specifics aside, however, transformation remains a vexing issue for sports administrators.We need to shift our mindsets to recognise what is, at least to me, the obvious reality that if we wish to remain competitive then we should be selecting from our entire population, not just that small (white) segment of it which has the historical head-start in playing the sport. Transformation should not dilute sporting strength, it should enhance it.However, there remains a possibility that must be acknowledged before we too readily create blanket expectations for transformation. This possibility can lead to some charged, emotive responses, so bear with me as I explain it progressively.First, we know that rugby performance is significantly influenced by physical characteristics. This is truer of some positions than others. Locks, for instance, must be tall - the average height of our locks at the Rugby World Cup is 2.02m. New Zealand's and England's average is 2.02m and 1.99m respectively. In fact, the shortest lock across all three teams is 1.98m tall. Think of this as an entrance requirement to be a lock in international rugby.Similarly, the average mass of front-row forwards at the 2011 World Cup was 113kg, and there's not much "wiggle room" around this. The range is greater in the backs, but here, too, the modern game necessitates size, speed and power that can only be developed up to a point through training.Given that innate, partly untrainable qualities influence performance, it would be naïve to fail to at least acknowledge the possibility that some populations may possess them more abundantly than others. Japan, for instance, is a country in the bottom quarter of the world for average height, so finding players with the optimal size is that much more challenging. It's not that there are none, they're just very rare and thus costlier to find. So it's no surprise to learn that their locks at the World Cup will only be 1.94m tall, and that they import players from other countries, in part to fill this physical void.How is this relevant to our transformation puzzle? Well, it has been documented at Craven Week level that black players are smaller in mass and stature than white players. That is, fewer black players meet those "entrance requirements" to become international rugby players.There are two possible explanations for this. One is that, from childhood, white players are exposed to better nutrition and training methods. If this is the case, then any transformation solution must do two things. First, it must provide better nutrition and training, particularly gym training, to young players, to help bridge that gap. The problem is that this may be too little, too late, and so the second part of the solution would have to address the discrepancy long before a child even becomes a rugby player! This requires a social intervention as much as a sporting one, but to ignore it and put the onus for representation on senior level coaches would be unfair.The other possibility is that we are in fact seeing population differences between white and black players, where per 100 people, there are more "viable" white rugby players, who are bigger and taller even when exposed to identical environments and training regimes as black players. If this is the case (and let me be clear - I don't know if it is), then no amount of forced intervention will change the proportion of players who emerge.Instead, we'd have to reset our expectations for transformation. Only a long-term study to track the physical and performance characteristics of young players, starting at about 16, all the way through to Currie Cup or Varsity Cup level, would answer this question. I suspect the largest part of the problem remains attitudes, but being blind to this possibility doesn't help an already volatile and confusing discussion...