The new president of the South African Rugby Union (Saru) has been in power for a week. Like all his predecessors since readmission in 1992, Oregan Hoskins was elected not because of who he was, but who he wasn’t.
Given the two years of turmoil that preceded last Friday’s vote, it’s hard to remember that Hoskins’s predecessor was welcomed as warmly as the likeable Durban lawyer. Brian van Rooyen was elected because he was not part of the tainted elite that had taken the sport in this country to the moral low ground.
The night before he was elected, Van Rooyen rebuffed a series of envoys from the serving president, Silas Nkanunu. Widely seen as a puppet of the real head of South African Rugby, Riaan Oberholzer, Nkanunu was seeking one last payout. He didn’t get it, but Oberholzer and national coach Rudolf Straeuli did, in a deal brokered by Van Rooyen.
It should therefore come as no surprise that on the final night of his presidency Van Rooyen attempted to cling to power like a drowning man clings to a branch. It is alleged that Van Rooyen offered R3-million in sponsorship and a Test match to the Free State Rugby Union if they would cast their three votes in his favour the following day.
Van Rooyen was duly dumped from office the next day, but the reaction of the electorate to his successor reveals much about why Van Rooyen was allowed to get away with his opaque autocracy for so long. All the talk this week has been about deals: how to get out of the ones you don’t like and how to make new ones you do.
Speculation is rife about the reallocation of Test matches, the scrapping of relegation from the Super 14 and the fate of the Currie Cup, and all because there is a new president in power. The fact that those decisions were formulated and agreed upon at the highest level is suddenly irrelevant.
Van Rooyen’s final address to Saru’s representatives referred to the power of a democratic voting process, yet, as soon as the process was out of the way, the tired old face of South African rugby revealed itself again: the unions don’t want democracy, they want a president who will tell them what to do.
That is not Hoskins’s way and it will come back to haunt him.
In much the same way, South African failures in round three of the Super 14 will have painful repercussions down the line. The Sharks should have beaten the Crusaders, the Stormers should have beaten the Brumbies and the Cheetahs should have beaten the Highlanders.
Only the Sharks had the excuse of playing away from home. Dick Muir’s amalgam of wet-behind-the-ears-kids and superannuated warhorses led 20 to 6 shortly after half time against the champion Crusaders in Timaru. The fact that they subsequently surrendered 17 unanswered points would be easier to bear had they not lost to the Cheetahs in Durban a week previously.
Home points squandered are simply not acceptable at this level of the game.
Conditions were awfully hard in Bloemfontein, but the Cheetahs were controlling the contest until the last five minutes against the Highlanders. We seem to be breeding a generation of rugby players who believe that games are judged over 75 minutes.
If that seems unduly harsh, remember that the Springboks came within four minutes of retaining their Tri-Nations title last year in Christchurch.
Remember, too, that they lost against the All Blacks the previous year in Dunedin when Doug Howlett scored with the last move of the match. Taken in isolation, these narrow defeats appear at worst unlucky, but the Gary Player principle applies: the harder you practice the luckier you get.
In this country, the only team that can fairly claim to be properly prepared for all that fortune can toss their way is the Bulls. Coach Heyneke Meyer understands the oldest cliché in the game: you can’t play without the ball.
Criticism of the Bulls must therefore revolve around how they use the ball once their mighty forwards have secured it. Ah, there’s the rub. In Bryan Habana, the Bulls have the most potent attacking weapon in the game, yet he spends each match cooling his heels on the wing. It would be tempting to say that returning him to his preferred position at outside centre could solve the problem, but JP Nel, the current incumbent in jersey 13, also spends his days observing the oval ball from afar.
The Bulls lack ambition and, until they find some, they will not be serious candidates for the Super 14 title. They are not alone in ambition deficit, largely because successive Saru administrations have ignored results in favour of window dressing. Hopefully, that is about to change.