GAVIN RICH

Cape Town

Those who have been close to the happenings that have made for a tumultuous start to the year for Western Province rugby keep evoking the image of a house of cards ready to collapse inwards on itself – yet so far, those who should matter most are keeping that from happening.

Who are those who should matter most? Not the elected officials who for most of the professional era have kept WP mediocre through their blindness to the realities of professional rugby, even though they will matter a lot if the house of cards should collapse and there is regression from the level the Stormers attained during the Rassie Erasmus era. They will then be the clear target of blame.

No, those who matter most are the coaches that Erasmus has left behind. They are mostly capable people – Erasmus did hand pick them after all – and they should still be able to capitalise and build on the structures and systems that the former director of rugby put in place during a four-year spell which saw the Stormers go from being perennial also-rans to consistent Super Rugby contenders.

Of course, also important are the players who have come through the succession planning implemented by Erasmus. Many of those players are chomping at the bit to show they are ready to make the step up. And like last year, when an impressive wave of recent under-21 players graduated to senior level, so far the pre-season phase has suggested that the pipeline is still flowing strongly.

A win over the Cheetahs in the DHL Pre-Season Series match at Newlands today will emphatically underline that fact as the Stormers team is essentially a second string combination.

Only skipper Schalk Burger, Rynhardt Elstadt and possibly Deon Fourie can be considered near certain first choice players for the first Super Rugby match against the Hurricanes at Newlands three weeks hence.

The cynical might suggest that by starting Burger today, Stormers coach Allister Coetzee is avoiding a possible fiery personal clash between his captain and former Stormers stalwart Luke Watson next week when the Cape side go to Port Elizabeth for their final warm-up game.

The Cheetahs are pretty close to full strength, or certainly a lot closer to it than the hosts, so those young Stormers players who do shine today will leave no doubt about their ability to play in the higher echelon.

That will mean they survive the cut which on Monday will separate the Stormers players from the Vodacom Cup squad and could potentially provide Coetzee with the tricky test of his first season without Erasmus on hand to deal with the nitty gritty of contracting and recruitment.

How is this so? It comes down to the expectations of the players, many of whom would have been given some hope by the Stormers management that they would be playing Super Rugby this year. It’s believed that there is a lot of interest in young WP players from outside the province, and once those players become disaffected they become easier targets. Many of them come off contract in October.

When Erasmus was there he spent a lot of time dealing with the players and discussing their prospects and contract issues. Like Rudolf Straeuli is at the Sharks and Heyneke Meyer was at the Bulls last year, he was the man the players went to when they had problems related to their contracts. This left Coetzee to continue with the coaching side of it, and he was able to do what coaches should do, which is focus on the next weekend and the next game.

If Coetzee hasn’t found this out already, dealing with player agents (and all too often in this province the players’ fathers too) can be as big a challenge as preparing to play the Crusaders. Only time will tell whether, when the time of crisis comes, he is happy to do both or indeed capable of doing both.

So far there has been no word from the WP decision makers on whether to replace Erasmus. The argument that the province doesn’t need a director of rugby is naive, but then these same people chased away Erasmus, so they are probably capable of thinking that the Stormers can just muddle on without one, or that Coetzee can fill both roles.

Either way, the testing times are in the future in the form of those periods when a sequence of defeats might test the fortitude and calmness under pressure of the coaches and when it becomes apparent that game innovation is needed and Erasmus is not there to take the call.

Fortunately, last week’s win over the Lions reminded us that while Erasmus has parted ways with WP his long-time sidekick, Jacques Nienaber, is still present to oversee the defensive system, which was the pillar of what successes were achieved in the past two seasons.

As long as that is the case, there is hope. But he may well be the card that WP daren’t shift if it isn’t all going to go tumbling down.

Kick-off: 5pm