Andy Capostagno: Rugby
It has been an interesting couple of weeks for the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu). First came the good news; the Super 12 season would begin with four regional teams from South Africa who, at least on the surface, would all be happily putting aside provincial differences to raise the level of the game within South Africa.
The achievement of this laudable ambition was alluded to by Michael Jones, the new captain of the Auckland Blues, who, asked after his team had lost their opening Super 12 encounter to the Coastal Sharks in Durban what he thought of the regional system, said: “It’s a bloody disaster.” And a disaster it may yet be, for the ambitions of the New Zealand and Australian sides in the competition.
But every silver lining has a cloud and Sarfu has been learning that every forward step has its backward leaning. For, how else but backward can the current battle over a return to amateurism in the lower levels of the game be? Remember the scenes of unconfined joy when the International Rugby Football Board (IRB) pulled the plug on shamateurism.
“We know what’s going on,” they said, “and we are sick and tired of trying to stop it, so just get on with it and make sure some of the profits come our way.” The IRB washed their hands, buried their heads in the sand and welcomed rugby league players back as though they had miraculously found a cure for leprosy.
What the IRB did not address was the manner in which professionalism would be assimilated at club level. Each union was expected to deal with it as best they might. Which brought problems. So much so that at the beginning of this season Sarfu decided that enough was enough and to all intents and purposes banned professionalism from the game below provincial level.
The theory, or part of it, was that the clubs were being put out of business by player demands for pay for play.
In Johannesburg, for instance, Pirates Rugby Club spent R780 000 on rugby in 1997. It paid off, they won the Pirates Grand Challenge (the Johannesburg club competition which bears their name) for the first time in 51 years and, along the way, attracted sponsorship from Beck’s beer.
That a modern rugby club should seek and find sponsorship from a brewer is, in itself, something to celebrate, because what used to be a symbiotic relationship (between rugby players and beer) is in danger, due to the very demands of professionalism which led Pirates to success in 1997 in the first place.
On the positive side, however, I’m pleased to report that when I played golf with Joost van der Westhuizen at The Lost City last week, he took happy advantage of a cold beer between the fourth green and the fifth tee. On the negative side, however, Joost turned to soft drinks on the back nine and his swing showed a marked deterioration. The two are, I’m quite certain, not unconnected.
But I digress. Pirates, and a lot of other clubs, spent a lot of money on their players last season, only to be told by Sarfu at the beginning of this season that the maximum they could pay their first team players was R100 per match, plus R30 per month petrol expenses. Below first team level payment was not permitted.
Nico de Lange of Pretoria Rugby Club decided that was unacceptable. He pointed out that when given carte blanche by Sarfu at the beginning of the 1996 season he had signed his players to three-year contracts. To now break those contracts would be unconstitutional. Sarfu, pausing only to wipe the egg from its face, climbed down.
Pretoria Rugby Club is now building an hotel adjacent to its ground. Pirates are getting rid of the famous and much loved Pigeon Loft Bar and building a new theme pub, which will be open to the public in the unlikely event that its famously thirsty members leave anything to be consumed by outsiders.
The point of all this is that Sarfu is not a body used to, or happy with, climb-downs. Which makes it doubly surprising when its CEO, Rian Oberholzer, announces to the press, “It’s human to make a mistake. We’ve made one. What’s important is we’ve recognised it and will rectify it. I will be sending a directive to the provincial executives.”
The final irony is that the above quote comes not from wrangling over amateurism, but from the relaxing of selection criteria for the Vodacom Cup. Two climb-downs in two weeks. At this rate it’s time to start wondering what the outcome of a certain well publicised court case involving Sarfu might be.
We have all been expecting Sarfu’s legal representative to sum up by blowing a long, loud raspberry at the judge. What price now that the gentleman in question stands up and says, “It’s human to make a mistake. We’ve made one. What’s important is we’ve recognised it and will rectify it.”