South African Rugby’s president’s council has rubber-stamped a decision to return to strength versus strength for South Africa’s premier domestic competition, the Currie Cup, it was announced on Tuesday.
This will ensure that the country’s strongest teams face each other, while smaller unions will compete separately.
At the same time, the organisation admitted to ”poor corporate governance” but pledged to rectify the matter to improve its image at home and abroad.
President Brian van Rooyen was quick to defuse the potentially divisive matter, saying that the smaller rugby unions in South Africa will be happy with the latest turn of events.
”They have to be,” he countered, ”they took the decision. The president’s council made that decision at the July 29 meeting.”
The conclusion of strength versus strength is, however, likely to rankle the smaller unions somewhat, but seems to have been made with the best interests of South African rugby as a whole.
The smaller unions have been promised compensation to ensure they can remain a viable entity in the country’s rugby fraternity to ensure a positive future.
Gideon Sam confirmed that the smaller unions will still get a healthy slice of the financial pie in the future.
”Another issue that came up was that all the money should not go to the bigger unions, so that the smaller unions can survive. And we are currently refining that,” he said.
”Confusion could have crept in because people did not take into account the modalities of the 7-7 structure. They thought there was maybe another way to arrive at the 7-7 format. The only problem now is to determine how the top and bottom seven will be determined,” said Sam.
Van Rooyen said that the council accepted the much-publicised resignation of deputy president Andre Markgraaff.
”The president’s council accepted Andre Markgraaff’s resignation, although we were never informed of the reasons. We thought, this was the situation and we have to live with it.”
Van Rooyen promised that SA Rugby will begin working together for the greater good of the organisation.
”We must clear the deficiencies between the council, governing bodies and other structures to ensure a positive way forward,” he said. — Sapa