No team anywhere in the world of sport comes to the line freighted with more social and political baggage than the Springboks. Even now, more than 10 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa's players cannot complete their preparations for their first big match of the World Cup without their country's egregious history getting in the way.

The dropping this week of Lawrence Sephaka, the black loose-head prop, appeared to confirm the worst suspicions of those who believe the Springboks have yet to purge old racist attitudes from their squad. Sephaka's absence means that the team will take the field against England with only one non-white player, the winger Ashwin Willemse, thus failing to meet the requirement of their own governing body that every team should include at least two non-whites.

By insisting that his only priority was to select the 15 best players for the job, South Africa's coach Rudolf Straeuli breached that edict. Quotas are a touchy subject, and any coach would understand the imperatives behind Straeuli's decision.

But by giving Christo Bezuidenhout his first cap at the expense of a man who was voted South Africa's player of the year in 2002, Straeuli appeared to be reviving the old war between the forces of enlightenment and reaction within South Africa.

Straeuli's defensive attitude during his press conference did little to disarm the sceptics.

Important as this match is for England, its significance is even greater to South Africa. David Kirk, the former All Black captain, put it neatly yesterday. "The Springboks know that if they win this game, they're in contention for a place in the final," he said. "If they lose it, they're in big trouble." Such a factor was no doubt behind the decision to drop Sephaka, who had a moderate game against Uruguay. But the quota is there for reasons that go far beyond the need to win games. It is there as part of the effort to heal divisions and should not be negotiable.

The Springboks' achievement in winning the first World Cup held after their re-emergence was all the more remarkable for the way in which they also won hearts and minds. Led by the example of the manager, Morne du Plessis, the coach, Kitch Christie, the captain, Francois Pienaar, and the Sarfu chairman, Ed Griffiths, the players dispelled the old image of the arrogant Boer. By the time the final came around, most neutrals were rooting for the Springboks.

Since that triumph, with the exception of a long unbeaten run under Nick Mallett between World Cups, little has gone right.

A win against England today might be greeted as a miracle back home, but it would take a lot more than that to give his Springboks the international box-office appeal of the 1995 squad. The farther they recede into history, the more the achievement of Du Plessis, Christie, Pienaar and Griffiths looks like the real miracle.