Rudolf Straeuli is trying to reinvent Springbok rugby
When Rudolf Straeuli took over the coaching job at the Sharks two years ago he was surprised to discover that he needed to tell his kickers to stay behind after training to practise kicking. Now, as national coach, he has resurrected Springbok trials, something that has not happened since readmission and, instead of putting his players up in a five-star hotel, they will be based at the Police College in Pretoria. Why has he done this?
The short answer is: because he had to. Straeuli has inherited a system that doesn’t work. Ever since Louis Luyt’s knee-jerk reaction to the threat of Kerry Packer’s rugby circus in 1995 the Springboks have been treated with kid gloves. They have been paid ridiculous amounts of money with no performance incentives. The national side has been treated like a private club; loyalty to the coach, fellow players, the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) and SA Rugby has been prized far above actually winning Tests.
We have had to endure a string of defeated captains and coaches parroting rubbish about ”learning curves”, ”processes” and ”structures”. Straeuli may fail as badly as his predecessor, Harry Viljoen (although I seriously doubt it), but at least he will fail with his integrity intact.
The malaise that this country’s rugby has fallen into was exemplified in the decision this week by Percy Montgomery to play his rugby overseas. Since the day in 1997 when Carel du Plessis plucked him out of obscurity, Montgomery has been the player that South Africans loved to hate. At Loftus Versfeld and Ellis Park he was actually booed while representing his country.
After four years of enduring the weight of national expectation, Harry Viljoen finally dropped Montgomery last year and his Springbok contract was not renewed. In the circumstances, if he had sought an overseas contract during the January/February downtime no one would have been the least surprised. Instead he played a full season of Super 12 for the Stormers and played so well that the job of Springbok fullback became a non- issue: it was Montgomery’s by right.
So what happened? Montgomery’s agent, Craig Livingstone, phoned Straeuli on Friday night, on the eve of the Stormers’ final Super 12 match, and demanded a contract for his client that would continue through next year’s World Cup. Straeuli demurred. Finally Montgomery himself phoned Straeuli on Monday and said he wasn’t keen on going to trials. Straeuli tried to persuade him otherwise. Montgomery demurred. Now the Springbok fullback berth will go to a deserving player who catches the coach’s eye during trials. All is as it should be.
So in the space of two months Andre Vos, Pieter Rossouw and Percy Montgomery have made themselves unavailable for the national side. Add in Braam van Straaten, Charl Marais, Rob Kempson (three more Stormers) and Thinus Delport and it might seem like the dreaded player exodus that agents and their clients have been warning us about for so long. But it is not.
These players are departing for many and various reasons, but the number one reason is that they believe the game owes them a living. It is very hard to say this without upsetting many players who have given their all for rugby in this country, but the game owes nobody a living.
Since 1995, when the game went professional, a generation of players has grown up with the belief that being good at rugby should ensure financial security for life. Such a view ignores the fact that careers are being shortened by too much rugby and that serious injuries are coming around more and more frequently.
The best player may be a rooster one day, a feather duster the next: he needs to plan for the future as assiduously as any nine-to-fiver who would sell his grandma to be a professional rugby player. What this tells us is that any organisation that gave out contracts ensuring a place in a competition 18 months hence is mad and should be accountable to its stakeholders.
Straeuli’s refusal to ”have a gun held to my head” means that he does not have quite the same depth to choose from for the first Test of the year, but it also means that he will have a good deal more fresh air to breathe while he ponders his team.
To prove that he intends giving everyone a fair chance he has gone so far as to bring James Dalton in from the cold, although that is principally due to the injuries to John Smit and Lucas van Biljon. He has also, far more presciently, selected a handful of South African under-21 and Springbok Sevens players.
In the bad old days Danie Craven was fond of plucking an unknown from trials and making him a Springbok: it helped if the unknown was from Stellenbosch. This weekend Straeuli has a chance to reinvent Springbok rugby. It is something that has come not a moment too soon. May his broom sweep hermetically clean.