It took two and a half months, but finally there was a week of Super 14 rugby where all five South African teams were competitive. Springbok coach Jake White must be thankful for small mercies, for a number of his favourites are finally hitting their straps a month ahead of the international season. Imagine if they’d peaked in February and faded in June?
For the record, last week the five teams managed two wins, two defeats and a draw.
The latter result occurred at Ellis Park where the Cats needed a try deep into injury time to prevent the Force from winning their first match as a franchise. The fact that the Cats were at home against the basement dwellers tells us all we need to know: this is a franchise in serious trouble.
Had the South African Rugby Union (Saru) not decided to abandon the idea of relegating our bottom placed team, the Cats would have been replaced by the Spears for the 2007 season. Among the many arguments for and against, no one mentioned at the time the most obvious: that the relegated side would be forced to take a long, hard look at itself.
It is surely time for the Cats to conduct a massive overhaul of the way they do things and, no, that doesn’t mean simply sack the coach. Frans Ludeke may have a dreadful record, but his unlucky successor will have to deal with some unpalatable truths before he can get on with coaching.
Principal among these is the position of the Ellis Park stadium. Government intervention notwithstanding, the centre of Johannesburg is not somewhere the vast majority of the rugby-watching public wishes to go, particularly after dark.
Several years ago the Golden Lions Rugby Union (GLRU) attempted to address this issue by implementing a ”park and ride” scheme, allowing spectators to park their cars 10km away and be bused in and out. Great idea, underutilised, because most Johannesburgers, given the choice between losing a leg and losing their car, would happily hop the rest of their lives away.
Then there’s the issue of security while actually at the ground. Last Friday, while the Cats/Force game was under way, four men with AK-47s robbed the ticket desk.
They didn’t get away with much because the crowd was miniscule, but that’s hardly the point. This is the point: the players are not immune.
That is to say, it’s one thing for the Bulls to create a fortress in a leafy Pretoria suburb on a 20ha plot with pre- and post-match entertainment. It’s quite another to attempt the same at a concrete megalith with spiked railings demarcating where the rugby ground begins and urban decay ends.
Imagine yourself a player turning up for work. Which ground would you be happier driving to? Then consider why Bryan Habana, Johannesburg born and raised, would choose to leave the Cats, move across the Jukskei and play out of position for a team that doesn’t know how to pass the ball to him. It’s not just about money.
There is no easy solution. Some years ago there was talk of the GLRU selling Ellis Park, building a new stadium in Midrand and ground sharing with the Falcons. The problem then as now, is the lack of competition to acquire Ellis Park.
Purely in terms of a facility it is worth more than R500-million, but if someone offered R100-million the GLRU would bite their arms off. So the Cats (and the Lions) are stuck in a rusting hulk, waiting for a salvage vessel that will never come. In the circumstances, relegation might have been a good option.
At the other end of the scale are the Cheetahs, who were recently divorced after an unhappy eight year marriage to the Cats. The crowds have come back to Bloemfontein because their team has its identity back. It helps that Free State won the Currie Cup last year, but it also proves once and for all that people are parochial. They never supported the Cats because they were not Johannesburgers. A simple lesson, and one worth remembering at Saru.
It is true, of course, that success long enough deferred creates distrust. The Sharks have had seven lean years following seven fat ones in the 1990s and in Durban the jury is still out on their new-look team. Dick Muir’s team has played some scintillating rugby this year, but they have yet to attract more than 28 000 people to Kings Park during the Super 14 campaign.
That may change this week, when the Stormers are the visitors, for Western Province, in whatever guise the marketers wish to dress them, always bring support with them. But will the people of Natal support a game that has no more than local relevance? The answer to that question is the true litmus test for the state of the game in this country right now.