South Africa: Transfer System

The scheme, brain child of former Free State president John Blair, a committee is soon to be established to strictly monitor what is little more than a transfer system, but one which the UCB hope, in industrial buzz terminology ``fast track'' players through the system.

Richard Harrison, the UCB executive member responsible for handling the pool player system portfolio, said the plan was more of a voluntary draft system and would be handled by an arbitration committee with players, once they had been committed to a host province, be part of their playing compliment for the remainder of the season. This would prevent players moving from a new province back to their old union in the same season.

Part of the scheme is a restriction of 17 players, which excludes those under UCB contract, and in a move to speed up the process, the 17 (or less) names of each provincial squad must be listed with the UCB by June 1.

Players to be included in the pool system are those who have not been contracted by the 11 provinces who are part of the SuperSport Series or the Standard Bank League and Cup limited-overs tournaments. Those ``players of colour'' who have been included in the pool system must be contracted by the end of July.

Outlining the benefits of the system, Harrison said the idea was designed to give those provinces where there were no black players in the provincial system a chance to contract promising players from the pool. ``Hopefully we will see the players as well as the weaker provinces benefit through this system,'' Harrison said.

Imtiaz Patel, the UCB's director of professional players affairs, said the pool system had nothing to do with quotas or affirmative action. The idea was to increase the number of back players at provincial level as fast as possible.

Asked if the plan was to have more than 100 provincial black players by 2005, he hoped ``we would be normalised to the extent to away with the pool system.''