Cape Town - South African rugby has been far from perfect since unity in 1992, yet the Springboks have won two World Cups. Imagine if all stakeholders actually work together for the greater good of the game?
The first steps towards that goal were taken last Friday when the provinces agreed to relinquish many of their powers to the Executive Council.
But it’s about what happens on the field as well, and one aspect that was brought up by chief executive Jurie Roux is the drafting of players from one franchise to another for Super Rugby.
Of course, the team that would need it the most are the Southern Kings, who battled with player resources last season. But even other teams could do with some reinforcements, and in that way, ensure the best players are at least getting game time in Super Rugby.
The unfortunate case of S’bura Sithole came up last year. Sithole should’ve been picked by Heyneke Meyer for the Springbok squad in recent years after excelling for the Sharks, but was ignored, with only a call-up to a training camp in 2014. Then suddenly last season, he hardly received any Super Rugby game time.
It is an issue that needs to be resolved to ultimately aid the Springbok team and give the national coach as many viable options to choose from as possible.
“The elephant in the room that everyone always talks about is that every union has a CEO, president, and it’s own goals and targets. As long as we move in 14 different directions - and if you count us in, then it’s 15 - we will never take rugby forward,” Roux said.
“Now we are saying we, with the 14 unions, here are all our decisions about semi-professional competitions and how we will handle those players – in other words, we will decide together how to do it. And we will do exactly the same with professional rugby.
“I think the end result of that is six franchises sitting together in a room and deciding that we cannot have more than 300 professional players in this country. What are we going to do with the 300 professional players? We cannot afford it and it’s not sustainable.
“In a perfect world, those six franchises should sit and say ‘Listen here, I am sitting with five locks. I will give you two of my locks because I have the five best locks. Rather let three play by me and two by you, than to have two locks playing for you that aren’t among the best".
“We must have the best 300 players in the country, as an example, must play professional rugby. And with the semi-professional players, we must make sure that we have the best possible platforms for the amateur teams, which will, in the end, move to the full professional teams.”
The situation around overseas-based players also needs to be sorted out, and in that respect, the change in the SA Rugby constitution that allows a third party to own 74 percent of the commercial arm of a union could be critical in helping teams hold on to their best players.
But still, SA Rugby need to take a firm stance on players overseas, with a caps-based policy similar to Australia perhaps the way to go. New Zealand don’t pick anyone outside of their borders, but the lure of the All Blacks is at an all-time high at the moment compared to the Boks, who are ranked sixth in the world.
“How are we going to contract the Springboks, or what will we do about their contracts? How are we going to keep the best Springboks in the country? What must we do about overseas-based players? All those decisions must be made in this committee and we must decide on that together,” Roux said.
“That’s the direction in which we are going. The next step is that there is nothing that is holding you back to a model where you can sell a part of your professional arm, and you should be able to have enough capital to remain sustainable.
“The single biggest dilemma in our rugby - apart from success on the field - is that we are not sustainable as an entity with regards to the amount of players we have in the country at the moment.
“So, we must become fully professional, and then we must capitalise on it in one way or another. If we don’t, the money in the pool of South African rugby is not enough to compete with the pound, euro, yen or dollar.
“If we don’t have a plan – and perhaps part of the plan is that we don’t pick overseas-based players. But that is just one aspect. We must have a cohesive plan and everybody must move in the same direction.”
SA Rugby president Mark Alexander believes that the days of petty provincial interests being placed ahead of the national interest are over.
“I think we are moving beyond the time where we compete with each other. There could be a drafting system. We could still own the players, who could play somewhere for two or three years and come back. We need to find the mechanism to collaborate more,” he said.
“If we want to beat the All Blacks, we need to collaborate as a rugby structure. The All Blacks do that all the time, even with their national coach. We haven’t had that for a long time. So that culture has started with the indaba, and will continue with the franchise committee.”
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