If South Africa is to host the World Cup successfully next year the boardroom battles have to stop immediately
RUGBY: Jon Swift
JUST for a moment, think back to the uncertainty which dominated this country before the first clarion call of democracy was sounded, the new flag raised and our new state president installed.
In many ways, the unsavoury boardroom battles which have rocked rugby over the past two weeks draw a parallel. And the verbal gymnastics of Louis Luyt doing a verbal “she loves me, she loves me not” with the petals of the Sarfu’s presidency has not helped.
With the acrimonious mud-slinging with national team manager, Jannie Engelbrecht, seemingly over and the great former winger re-installed as the man at the helm of our team for next year’s World Cup, the spotlight now falls on the future of coach Ian McIntosh. For with Engelbrecht’s job safe, Luyt back in the president’s seat after a somewhat petulant and short-lived resignation, McIntosh and his assistant Gysie Pienaar must wait until next Wednesday to learn their fate.
Much has been read into the unseemly wrangling at the base of power. Names have been bandied about as McIntosh’s successor. But one point seems to have been missed. If Engelbrecht survived after what must clearly have been a spectacular slanging match behind the closed doors of Sarfu’s Cape Town boardroom, surely the same pressures will be brought to bear when the coach’s name comes up on the agenda.
For if, as Engelbrecht so plainly said, the management style was to blame, and, as would seem to be the case, this style has been tempered by a round of private mea culpas, why should McIntosh not be reprieved?
We tend to see issues — not just rugby issues — in a very linear form in this country. It is doubtless a legacy of the laager we built for ourselves over the years.
At issue though is not so much the national team’s immediate chances, but the success or otherwise of the World Cup tournament as a whole.
President Mandela and Sports Minister Steve Tshwete — the man again called in to mop up the mess the administrators had left behind — are firmly on record as saying that the World Cup is hugely important to this country as a whole. That fact will not alter no matter who finally holds the William Webb Ellis trophy aloft at the end of the series.
And, while it would be criminal not to use Luyt’s undoubted organisational talents to the full to ensure the success of World Cup 95, the nation as a whole cannot be held to ransom by the administrators of what is after all only a game.
Western Province’s Ronnie Masson — with Natal’s Keith Parkinson, one of two who voted against Luyt’s reinstatement as president — put it succinctly.
“He (Luyt) has been driving the World Cup,” said Masson, “and, while nobody is indispensible, the World Cup is only months away and his expertise is needed.”
Fulltime World Cup officials Craig Jamieson and Nic Labuschagne fell in with this thinking and underlined Luyt’s organisational input. But Jamieson pointed out one salient feature: the position of chief executive on the organising body falls to the man who holds the presidency of the host nation … regardless of who that man is.
In short, the time for bloodletting and name-calling is over. There are simply not enough days left before the World Cup is scheduled to kick off to carry on with a domestic battle which has worldwide connotations. We have to get our ducks in a row now. That means stopping the humiliating business of sackings and resignations; ceasing votes on the merits or demerits of individuals and start thinking as a united body.
It means confirming once again the national team’s management until the end of the World Cup and identifying a squad of players who our team in the tournament will be drawn from rather than relying on the one-test disposable method.
We cannot do otherwise if South Africa is to have any chance whatsoever in the meeting of rugby’s top nations next year. Nor can we deviate if we do not want the rest of the rugby world to regard us as a clamorous rat pack of barefoot yokels squabbling in the dust of a distant country.