/ 14 October 2016

Only brutal action will fix South African rugby

From the bottom up: Fixing rugby in South Africa needs to start at grass-roots level.
From the bottom up: Fixing rugby in South Africa needs to start at grass-roots level.

The South African Rugby Union (Saru) is in crisis. It has a dysfunctional franchise in the Eastern Cape and an even more dysfunctional coaching group at the helm of the national side. It is symptomatic of an organisation that has lost its way, yet a coaching indaba in Cape Town next week is now expected to produce, from thin air, a Holy Grail.

Intriguingly enough, before Saru’s announcement of the indaba three weeks ago, an email was doing the rounds among the Currie Cup and Super Rugby coaches asking for an independent gathering. Sniffing sedition and revolution in the air, Saru acted hastily to convene its own meeting.

In the fallout from last week’s heavy defeat by New Zealand, the indaba is expected to try to fix the Springboks in the short and long term. It has been suggested, not for the first time, that a blueprint for a national playing style should be produced and that provincial politics should be subsumed by the need for the Springboks to win on a consistent basis.

These are laudable aims but they are unlikely to be settled at a meeting of this sort. There will be far too many people in the room to offer meaningful conclusions, other than the fact that nobody is particularly happy about anything. The best that can be hoped for is that several working committees are set up with separate but overlapping portfolios.

One of these should be about the Currie Cup. We are at the knockout stage of a campaign considered by many as the weakest in living memory. The oldest provincial competition in the world has been denuded of its current Springboks because of the Rugby Championship, and stripped of its past and perhaps future Springboks by the strength of the currencies of Britain, France and Japan.

At the conclusion of log play last week, Saru officials were in contact with several unions about next year’s Super Rugby competition. There is a pressing need to sign players to represent the Kings franchise. The Griquas and the Pumas, in particular, have been targeted by Saru, which is now the de facto owner of the Kings because the Eastern Province Rugby Union is no longer a going concern.

The problem for the unions being asked to contribute is that player contracts are typically signed in July. If Saru had come with the begging bowl back then, it would have been possible for the unions to plan ahead for the time when their Kings players were not available. Now that it’s October, they can only negotiate with the small pool of players currently out of contract.

All of this points to the next portfolio committee: the turkey that has to vote for Christmas. It has become glaringly obvious that this country can no longer sustain 14 provincial unions and six franchises. Right there you have 20 reasons why the Springboks are not the number one priority.

When the Super 12 began in 1996, South Africa had four slots, New Zealand five and Australia three. Only New Zealand had the foresight to introduce franchises on day one. They had the political will to make Auckland and North Harbour, two extremely powerful unions, play together under the banner of the Blues.

In South Africa, a similar situation with Transvaal and Northern Transvaal was never resolved. “Over my dead body” was the order of the day. Every subsequent Super Rugby decision made by Saru has been informed by that impasse.

The ill-conceived expansion to 15 teams was a sop to allow South Africa one more. Ditto the disastrous 18-team conference system. Now we have six franchises, but not enough money to keep the best players in the system.

Last week, the Sharks trumpeted a three-year deal with young prop Thomas du Toit. What they were coy about was the fact that the deal is only for Super Rugby. Du Toit has signed for Munster and, pending a work permit, will divide his time between South Africa and Ireland.

This is far from an isolated case. Indeed, it is now the preferred career path for talented young players in this country, few of whom seem to care about the long-term effects of playing rugby for 12 months a year.

It is up to Saru to grasp the nettle. A working committee needs to propose a five-franchise Super Rugby set-up and a semiprofessional Currie Cup. The money saved on salaries for the sixth franchise and the bloated professional staff of the 14 provinces can be used to pay the top centrally contracted 150 players enough to stay in South Africa.

It could also go towards putting in place a coaching structure worthy of the name. And that would be working committee number three. Look at what happens in New Zealand and England, where progression through the ranks is the cornerstone of the coaching system and there are no short cuts.

It presupposes, of course, that there are enough decent sides below provincial and franchise level for a young coach to cut his teeth. Right now, it’s hard to believe that the Varsity Cup will be allowed to continue in its current form, so the onus is on Saru to rescue club rugby. The Gold Cup is a step in the right direction, but it has to be more fundamental.

An indaba that thinks it can fix Springbok woes from the top down is doomed to failure. Grass-roots players have to be prioritised and there must be no sacred cows. Grow the pipeline between schools, clubs and provinces, pay amateur players enough to keep them interested and explain that there is only room for 150 very well-paid players at the apex of the system.

Best of luck, men.