The return of the conquering Springboks was meant to galvanise the Currie Cup. A few were eased back into action last weekend and more will join the provincial fray this week. Sharks coach John Plumtree sent four Tri-Nations winners on to the park at the beginning of the second half against the Cheetahs in Durban last week, including the talismanic captain, John Smit.
The injection of famous names did not have the desired effect, however, and the Sharks went backwards instead of forwards. Ultimately, it took a few nerveless place kicks at goal from Juan MartÃn Hernández to settle the game down and the Sharks ended the weekend at the top of the table.
Hernández was one of the outstanding players in the 2007 World Cup, playing for his native Argentina. He has joined the Sharks on a one-year contract and will be part of the squad for next year’s Super 14. As such he will be in the vanguard of sweeping changes coming to the competitions organised by South Africa, New Zealand, Australia Rugby (Sanzar).
Next week the new television rights deal between Sanzar and Newscorp will be debated in Australia. If all goes according to plan, a new five-year deal will endorse two expansions: the Super 15 (beginning in 2011) and the Four Nations (beginning in 2012). The fourth nation in this instance is Argentina.
The Pumas were expected to join in when the Tri-Nations was expanded two years ago, but the three Sanzar unions got cold feet and agreed instead to play one another an extra time every year. Now the International Rugby Board (IRB) has agreed to sweeten the pill for Sanzar to grow the game globally. The game’s ruling body will pay an undisclosed amount annually into Sanzar’s coffers to help Argentina.
The IRB is attending to unfinished business. When the Pumas finished third at the 2007 World Cup it agreed to find an annual competition for them to play in. Because of the abundance of first-choice Puma players based in Europe there was some support for them to join the Six Nations. France even offered Marseilles as a home base for the Pumas. But the game was hardly likely to grow in Argentina if the national side was playing all its Tests overseas, so pressure was applied to Sanzar to admit a fourth member. Sanzar sent out a press release two days after the Springboks claimed the Tri-Nations title. With some caveats, it said that Argentina had been officially invited to join a new Four Nations competition from 2012.
The first caveat insisted on ”Argentina securing the participation of their best players to play in the Four Nations. To assist with this the national unions of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are very keen to work actively with Argentina to place their best players across Super Rugby teams in the three countries.”
This is radical stuff. Sanzar frowns upon anyone playing in the Super 14 who is not eligible for Tri-Nations rugby. Now they are going to encourage the franchises to sign up the Argentinian national squad. How Hernandez adapts to the rigours of the Super 14 may materially affect the manner in which that ”encouragement” is accepted.
Australia may be more amenable than either South Africa or New Zealand because of the paucity of their own playing resources. The 15th franchise is expected to go to Australia, despite heavy lobbying by the South African Rugby Union (Saru) for its own Southern Kings franchise earmarked for the Eastern Cape.
The new team is expected to be based in Melbourne, despite the fact that the two proposals emanating from that city cannot agree on a ground to play at or where they are going to get their players from. If both of these issues are resolved, a more pertinent question remains: where are they going to get their spectators from? Rugby Union is about as popular in Melbourne as a man frying sausages in a nudist camp. Rugby League and cricket both have their advocates, but each trails distantly behind Aussie Rules as the sport of choice.
Nevertheless, assuming they find a ground and market the game in Perth, home of the Western Force, they might welcome a bunch of itinerant Argentinians with open arms. Melbourne could become to the people of the pampas what Perth is to itchy-soled South Africans.
In the event that its players are not easily assimilated, however, the UAR, Argentina’s governing body, has established a high-performance squad of young players based in Buenos Aires. Former Pumas captain Agustin Pichot is in charge and the aim is to get the next generation of Test players used to the idea of playing their rugby in the southern hemisphere instead of in Europe.
There is a down side to all this. Argentina is one of the last bastions of amateurism. When the honour of representing the Pumas becomes a job, something will have been lost from the game, never to return. But there is no stopping an idea for which the time has come: we have seen the future and it speaks Spanish.