The schoolboyish spat between South Africa’s rugby administrators is hurting the players and the image of the game
RUGBY: Jon Swift
So South African Rugby football Union president Louis Luyt and South African team manager Jannie Engelbrecht have publicly shaken hands. One senses the strong hand of Sarfu vice-president, strongman Mluleke George, as the matchmaker in this facesaving arranged marriage.
But the long-term result of this week’s unseemly acrimony at the top of South African rugby is this: win, lose or draw, our campaign in the World Cup, due for this country next year, is already irrevocably tarnished.
Engelbrecht, appointed manager for the home series against France last year following the tenure of John Williams for the disasterous tour to France and England in 1992, put it in a nutshell.
“South African rugby cannot be exposed any longer to this sort of confrontation and disruption,” he said. “It leaves the rest of the rugby world laughing at us.”
Engelbrecht is right. It has, to put it mildly, been a week when South African rugby has daubed itself in shame. The tragedy is that the players will suffer from the attitudes articulated by South African Rugby Football Union president Louis Luyt’s unprecedented attack on the management of the national team.
There was something almost petulantly schoolboyish about the slanging match which has developed between Luyt and Engelbrecht.
And to lay all the blame for a record which read won four, lost six, drawn two on the shoulders of Ian McIntosh since he was appointed national coach is simplistic in the extreme. He cannot possibly be solely responsible and for Luyt to brand him “a failure” as he has publicly done, does the man and the game a dismal disservice.
Doubtless at issue here is a variation of the homespun wisdom offered me by a former Springbok captain of some distinction. “You are trying your hardest,” he said. “Having a good time. Then the clowns with the clipboards arrive.”
At the heart of the current unsavoury issue — quite apart from the agonising wait McIntosh and his coaching deputy Gysie Pienaar have to endure to learn their fate — are a number of inescapable facts. Primarily these all spin off one axis; the expectations of our players have been unrealistic after 20 plus years in the wilderness.
The win-or-walk philosophy has been the core of some of our darkest moments. If simply playing the game of rugby football at a level calculated to earn international respect was what it was truly about it is doubtful that the players would have suffered as they clearly have.
Evidence of this is the growing list of discards, the degree of psyching-up which led to the dismissal from the test field of James Small against Australia in Brisbane last August and the manic desperation which led to Johan le Roux being effectively expelled from the game for his Hannibal Lector approach to All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear.
In the light of these events, Engelbrecht emerged with both strength and dignity. He defused the sending off of Small with dignity and diplomacy. He acted quickly and correctly in sending Le Roux home and was right in his reasoning that, once sentenced, Le Roux could not be tried again.
It is sad then that the prince of wings, a man who scored a Currie Cup final try with a damaged shoulder and effectively only one arm, should have been drawn into such a sordid slanging match. To label him a “has-been” is a disgrace and an unwarranted slight to the green and gold jersey he wore with such distinction.
While it would be foolish to believe that Luyt — with his wide power base among the unions who make up the voting members of Sarfu — will not get his wish and have Engelbrecht and McIntosh sacked at the special meeting of the union in Cape Town next Friday, one gets the distinct impression that this power has not been applied in anything like a rational manner.
Engelbrecht has gone so far as to describe it as “the tyranny of Louis Luyt” and to say: “Not even New Zealand want to speak to him now. The international community has also condemned him.”
Certainly, Luyt made few friends among the touring England party — or indeed many locals — when, after South Africa’s turnaround victory in the second test at Newlands, he made a hugely unfunny reference to the size of England manager Jack Rowell’s mouth in his presidential address at the after-match function.
Luyt understands power. His massive success as a businessman has shown this. And no-one can take away from him the turnaround he engineered in reviving Ellis Park from white elephant status to a viable enterprise and one of the great rugby venues of the world.
This undoubted management expertise was applied to slashing the unwieldy panel of selectors down to manageable proportions, a decision to be applauded. But it was obvious that, while this was the correct path to take, it was Luyt and Luyt alone who made the decision.
This would pose the question of exactly why Sarfu bother to have an executive at all.
Luyt has much to offer the game of rugby football. Not least is his firm contention that a core of players has at long last been identified as the basis for the World Cup campaign. This, hopefully, signals the start of a sound squad system and an end to the merry-go- round which has seen 50 plus players wear the green and gold since the test against New Zealand at Ellis Park on August 15 1992.
Hopefully, this will also bring an end to some of the mindbending selections which have seen the selection of Willie Hills — an admirable prop forward — at hooker and the dropping of the penetrative Small for fullback-cum-flyhalf Gavin Johnson — superb footballer though he has shown himself to be — on the South African wing.
The game in this country needs to get away from the grade school mentality of drawing challenging lines in the dust.
And, as a businessman of note, Luyt must begin to realise that the shareholders he represents as the caretaker of the game in this country are a volatile admix; the majority of them ordinary lower league players and paying supporters of the game at provincial and international level.
Engelbrecht and McIntosh have specific tasks to perform. The president of Sarfu’s brief is drawn far wider. His mandate, to enhance the reputation of rugby both domestically and internationally, is not.
This country has ridden the storms which threatened our being confirmed as the hosts for the 1994 World Cup during the initial turmoil of transition. Yet we will go into the prestige tournament with the image of a pack of squabbling country bumpkins. The game is larger than any of the egos involved in the accusations being thrown about with such abandon.