While the transfer market is in full swing and some big names are already in action on the field in this preposterously crowded season, there is no doubt that the most important news item of the new year is the appointment by the South African Rugby Union (Saru) of an MD.
Jonathan Stones is a former executive director on the board of Engen and, prior to that, was a business development director for Goodyear. Stones will enjoy a brief honeymoon period while people bend over backwards to say that what South African rugby has needed for decades is an MD with a successful business background and no ties to rugby per se.
At the first sign of a crisis, however, he will be pilloried as an outsider who knows nothing of the intricacies of the game. Cynical as this may be, it is as well that he knows it now, so that he can deal with it down the line.
In appointing Stones, Saru has fallen in line with international trends. Rugby went professional in 1995 and quickly the anachronism of a professional game run by amateurs became a hot topic. One of the first unions to deal with the issue was the oldest one of all: England.
The Rugby Football Union (RFU), which invented and ran the game in England for 130 years, had evolved an elaborate management structure based on the ”up and out” principle. Committed individuals could spend a lifetime serving on various boards and committees and a lucky few were rewarded by being voted into the position of president of the RFU. The vital codicil was that your first year as president was your last.
The strength of this system was its insistence on democratic procedure and the strict avoidance of the cult of personality. The weakness, which was highlighted after 1995 in particular, was a lack of continuity in what had become the most important part of the RFU, its commercial arm.
Accordingly, the gin-and-tonic brigade bit the bullet and appointed a CE. Francis Baron has now been in office for almost a decade, and while it has not always been a marriage made in heaven, the union is in its strongest ever financial position. And although England’s national side is plumbing the depths, they remain World Champions for at least another nine months.
Stones is fortunate in taking office during one of the few quiet times in the corridors of power that Saru has had since readmission in 1992. It even has a president (gasp!) who shuns the limelight and busies himself with making the union work.
Saru president Oregan Hoskins said before the appointment of Stones: ”It’s important that the presidency stands back a little. All year we’ve been dealing with issues that are essentially operational ones.
”Having said that, I don’t believe the role should ever be purely ceremonial. There is a difference between knowing what’s going on and interfering. The idea is that the president comes and goes, but the MD remains and allows for the continued success of a team that’s winning.”
It goes without saying that Stones’s job will be a lot easier if the Springboks are competitive. The good news is that something happened last week in Cape Town that might go a long way to ensuring the long-term success of the national side. Schalk Burger took part in his first contact session since injuring a vertebra in his neck against Scotland last June.
In August he still didn’t have enough feeling in his left arm to play the guitar, but by November he was fit enough to do gym work with the Springboks. This weekend he is due to play for the Stormers against the Bulls in a pre-season friendly at Loftus.
This is a quantum leap from a contact session and it is to be fervently hoped that those giving the 23-year-old dynamo his medical advice have his best interests at heart. If he should come through unscathed and then regain the form that made him the best player in the world in 2004, Springbok coach Jake White may yet emulate one of his predecessors, Kitch Christie, in winning a World Cup.
With Burger at the fore, 2007 might be remembered as the year of the comeback. Heyneke Meyer has persuaded Anton Leonard to leave his coffee shop in George to shore up the Bulls back row in the Super 14. And a rather more illustrious former Springbok eighth man is back after a four-year sojourn in England.
It is astonishing to realise that Bob Skinstad is just 30 years of age, and even more so to relate that this is the 10th anniversary of his annus mirabilis, 1997. May his signing by the Sharks prove to be something entirely other than an astute marketing ploy.