The ”big news” to emerge from Thursday’s emergency SA Rugby board meeting in Cape Town is that the appointment of the newest Springbok rugby coach will not take place on Friday January 30 as originally announced.
At this stage, no date has been set for the official appointment, in order to allow the SA Rugby executive to finalise the structures in which the new coach will operate.
Addressing the media after the lengthy meeting at SA Rugby headquarters, South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) president Brian van Rooyen said: ”A lot was said and debated, but the tone of the meeting was not fiery.”
”No vote was taken,” said Van Rooyen, ”but the board reached a consensus on a variety of topics.
”The process decided upon at the board meeting of December 10 will continue. The technical committee, however, will be asked to refine the criteria for the appointment of the Springbok coach.
”The board executive committee will look at structures and the framework within which the Springbok coach will be expected to operate and then only will the technical committee make its final recommendations to the board.”
The SA Rugby executive will meet on January 16 to discuss the new coach’s structures. That will be followed by a presentation to the technical committee.
While Van Rooyen was not able to give an exact date for the announcement, the chairperson of the technical committee, Arthrob Petersen, said it ”was not their intention to delay the announcement”.
”We don’t want to procrastinate,” said Petersen. ”There are so many other issues for the new coach to deal with.”
Van Rooyen concurred.
”The initial target date was January 30,” he added. ”The announcement will be made soon afterwards.”
Van Rooyen also added that the four-man shortlist — consisting of Andre Markgraaff, Chester Williams, Heyneke Meyer and Dumisani Mhani — would remain the same, but it could well be altered at a later stage, if none of the four on the current shortlist met the requirements of the technical committee.
When quizzed about the abovementioned statement, Van Rooyen replied: ”I don’t want to speculate at this stage. We want to make sure at this stage that the new coach comes into a decent structure first and foremost.”
Meanwhile, Dr Theunie Lategan, an independent director of the SA Rugby board — who is the CEO of FNB Corporate, a division of FirstRand Bank — was unanimously elected as chairperson of the board.
”We discussed the president’s manifesto of December 5 and he clarified some misconceptions that we, the board, had. The big thing for us, however, is that everyone pulls together. We’re all facing a huge task and if we’re divided, we’ll fail,” said Lategan
According to the 46-year-old Lategan, the board had ”fruitful discussions”, but it was his duty, as the independent director, ”to remain independent at all times”. — Sapa