Former Sharks boss Brian van Zyl has sensationally lifted the lid on the allegedly turbulent waters currently raging in the Shark Tank.
The chief executive at the Sharks from 1994 to mid-2013 has written an open letter to the editor of The Mercury in which he alleges that the Sharks are in dire financial straits and that the growing debt has been incurred over the past three years, since his retirement in 2013.
This was the period during which much-honoured former Springbok captain John Smit has been chief executive and Graham Mackenzie the president of the KZNRU.
Smit recently announced that he would not continue at the Sharks after the 2016 season’s end in October, prompting his predecessor to raise questions about his leadership in the public forum of The Mercury.
Van Zyl, a respected rugby administrator, feels that Smit was too inexperienced to have been appointed in the first place and was bound to make mistakes, and the Sharks have suffered financially as a result.
Van Zyl, a Natal rugby player and captain in the 1970s and a stalwart of Durban Collegians rugby club, where he is now president, says he cannot stand back and allow stakeholders like the Sharks’ supporters to remain uninformed as to what has been happening behind the scenes at Kings Park.
Smit played rugby for the Sharks after leaving school at Pretoria Boys’ High (the same school attended by Van Zyl) in a career in Durban stretching from 1998 to 2011. He was capped 111 times for the Springboks and captained his country to the 2007 Rugby World Cup title. Now 38, he says he is leaving rugby administration mostly because he wants to spend more time with his three young children.
MacKenzie also cops a volley or two of Van Zyl’s criticism.
This article is based on a letter sent as a regular contribution to our letters page. The letter arrived late yesterday. As such it could not afford John Smit and the Sharks adequate time or space to respond to all the matters canvassed.
The Mercury undertakes to give Smit and The Sharks the same length and prominence should they choose to respond to the claims made here. - The Mercury