Johannesburg – Sometimes, a year is so barren that it dictates that sleeves are rolled up, and there are consequences. When a long-standing member of the most popular reality TV series, the English Premier League, was relegated from the top table, they signed off the season by announcing that they would not be holding their end of year awards ceremony.
“In the circumstances, we are sure that our fans will understand,” Aston Villa’s chief execitve said at the time.
Of course they would, more than anyone else, because they had a front-row seat to a year of pain, when their flag dribbled miserably at half-mast. In those circumstances, there was no place for an evening toasting what misery had gone before.
If Saru were serious about changing the grim status quo of South African Rugby, then they could have done far worse than to pull the most prestigious gong at next Monday’s South African Player of the Year Awards.
In a year that has seen the aura of the Springbok wither to but a pale shadow of itself – the fear that the green and gold used to instil replaced by a relish to poke yet more holes into a gushing wound – this was the time to announce that, actually, no player had reached the requisite mark.
Scribes scratched their heads for weeks, trying to come up with a few names to put forward for the biggest individual honour in South African rugby. It has been that bad, certainly on the international front.
Sure, the Lions made formidable strides in Super Rugby. There is a category for that. Ditto the Cheetahs revolution in the Currie Cup, the likes of Curwin Bosch as the next wave of junior Messiahs, and coaches such as Neil Powell and Johan Ackerman, who have served with distinction in their respective posts.
But, at the pinnacle of our game, it is desperately hard to single out an individual who has stood out in Springbok colours. Thus, this year’s recognition is a hollow one, the least worst of a bad bunch. It is made even worse by the fact that a record defeat is still ringing in the ears of a public that can scarcely believe what it is witnessing.
It takes balls to pull an award so significant off the roster, but it would have been a sincere line drawn for an utterly forgettable 2016, ahead of an Indaba that is desperate to shape a better, united future for South African rugby.
It will take even bigger balls for that Indaba to recommend that everyone starts singing from the same sheet, pulling towards one goal, instead of taking players and their styles in contrasting franchise directions and ambitions, and then trying to somehow string that all together into a coherent Bok line-up. It doesn’t work.
South African rugby needed to lose by 50 points last week, in order for the message to be rammed home. An honourable, tackle-laden reverse by 10-15 points would have hoodwinked some for longer, and the wake-up call may have occurred down the road, at Twickenham, most likely.
But, there can be no hiding now. Change must come. The best players in the country stood and lay in tatters at King’s Park last week, wincing as the All Blacks took a lap of distinct honour from their people, on their patch.
Those same players will suit up next week, and they will be taken through some highlights from the season. Most of those will be in franchise matches, which are important, but are a mere speck when put into the bigger picture. Had the 2016 top gong been left vacant, every one of those players would have understood.
Before South African rugby turns out of the narrow-minded cul-de-sac it finds itself in, it needs to start being honest about its shortcomings. And that honesty, the kind that leaves the 2016 Player of the Year vacant, is the kind of accountability that the fans can understand. And appreciate.
In 2016, Springbok rugby confirmed its elimination from the game’s top table. The rebuilding, no matter how painstaking, has to start immediately. And that reconstruction is an entire nation’s Indaba.