Springbok coach Jake White is free to pursue other job offers because the president’s council of the South African Rugby Union (Saru) cannot plan more than 18 months in advance. Following a meeting with White on Tuesday, Saru president Oregan Hoskins said: ”After a very constructive discussion, the president’s council decided that the matter of extending the national coach’s contract would be dealt with within 30 days of completion of the 2007 Rugby World Cup tournament, as stipulated in his contract.”
Familiarity breeds contempt, it would seem, for Saru is now of the opinion that White is lucky to have a job in the first place. And how dare he seek improved terms? It was a little different just over two years ago, when White assumed the mantle cast aside by Rudolf Straeuli. He breathed pride back into the tarnished Springbok emblem and won the Tri-Nations at his first attempt.
Notwithstanding a poor tour of Europe at the end of 2004, White made his critics eat their words by doing it all again in 2005, narrowly missing out on retaining the Tri-Nations and building a team demonstrably stronger than the 2004 one. This year he has supervised a narrow victory against a World XV, two wins over Scotland and a 10-point defeat against France, and suddenly the knives are out.
As an ambitious man who, unlike some of his predecessors in the job, is not independently wealthy, White clearly sees the next two years as his best opportunity to secure his family’s financial future. A highly paid job as the director of coaching in England comes on the market and White wonders whether he might be eligible. So he sends in his CV and discovers that his fame precedes him.
It is at this point that White realises he has a little bargaining power. He has a two-year unbeaten home record as Springbok coach and he wonders whether that, together with some conspicuous performances on the road, might be enough to convince his employer to show a little faith in his ability. Big mistake.
This is not a meritocracy where success is rewarded as a matter of course. Hell, this isn’t even sport: it’s politics. So White gets beaten with the big stick, publicly humiliated, and fobbed off with: ”The president’s council wants to reiterate that the national coach currently has a sound contract in place and that it has every intention to honour that agreement with the Springbok coach.”
All because, like Oliver Twist, he dared to ask for more.
It goes without saying that this is scarcely the best way to begin the toughest Tri-Nations campaign in history. This year the Boks have to play New Zealand and Australia three times each, instead of twice, and nothing exposes a soft underbelly quite like facing the All Blacks and the Wallabies.
Up until the Springboks became competitive again under White, every Tri-Nations season began with loud laments over how better prepared and organised the opposition were. And yet, given a chance to catch up by entrenching the successful status quo, Saru fell back on the old expedient of waiting to see what happens in the World Cup.
This is the sort of results-driven nonsense that sends players on to the field with blinkers and leg irons. In the previous regime it allowed a poorly prepared and selected team to believe it could win the World Cup on ”gees” alone.
In 1999 the England team was bundled out of the World Cup at the quarterfinal stage by the Springboks in Paris. Under a South African regime the coach would have been locked in a room with a revolver and a bottle of whisky.
But the English RFU decided that, defeat notwithstanding, Clive Woodward was still the best man for the job and he duly delivered the Webb Ellis Trophy four years later in Australia.
Which is not to say that White should be allowed to underperform in his role up to and including next year’s World Cup, nor that continuity is necessarily a good thing per se. It is merely to point out that unions that base their playing and coaching strategies around the four-year cycle of the World Cup are doomed to failure.
This was an opportunity for Saru to step outside its conservative mindset and announce to the world that it has moved on. It should no longer be deemed a national disaster when the Springboks lose to anyone, let alone the best team in Europe mere days after a potentially career-threatening injury to their best player.
It is more than likely that the Springboks will be very competitive in the Tri-Nations, especially given the happy circumstance that they have eight days to prepare for their opening game in Australia, far away from the media spotlight.
They’ll be competitive because some of their injured stars are on the road to recovery and they have a coach worthy of the name. If only the president’s council was capable of realising that.