Just looking at the quality of rugby that SA teams has produced over the last 5 years and it doesn’t look great. I believe that the following action points should be considered in order for SA to restore our rugby teams and the Springboks
1. Kill the provinces power and control over super rugby teams.
· We seem to have a mixed up which province owns the super rugby teams. The Stormers use to have players from Boland, SWD and WP but some how WP seems to hold all of the power and these unions don’t seem to have the same input.
· Franchise the super rugby teams and give the provinces in certain region (WP, Boland, SWD) 50% ownership of this team, but allow a private investor to own the other 50%.
· Move the games to stadiums that would make more sense to the players and the unions. I know that the player use to complain travelling to George, but if your team is not filling the stadium against smaller teams, what is the point of hosting a game at Newlands. I do believe the likes of Boland and SWD would benefit from at least 1 game each a season to help bring rugby to their communities. It could also unsettle some of the opposition teams
· Turn all provincial teams into Semi Professional teams that will need to finance their own curie cup teams. The provinces can take their dividends from the franchises and invest it into their unio
· Turning it into franchises will mean that our super rugby teams will be run like business and won’t get dragged down by some of the dodgy provinces.
· We would also never have the Fiasco of the Kings again, as the sharks should in theory be playing a couple of games in PE, East London and Durban and EP should have a slice of the sharks brand.
- SARU would be responsible for issuing franchise licenses and awarding the regions and cities that has the bet business plan in place. If they fail after 4 years, withdraw their licence
2. Centralise player contracts
· We have a unique situation in that our players now play for 3 different teams throughout the season. A player like Janjties will bugger off to Japan for 4 months, pitch up just in time for Super Rugby and then get selected for the boks. Yes, the unions are happy to allow their players to skip curry cup rugby, but we need these guys to be locally based.
· SARU go $250 million from the Super Rugby deal, but yet seem eager to gobble up the money and spread across the provinces as all 14 Franchises want their slice with no benefit to the springbok team. The provinces hold onto the money and pay for the players out of their own pocket which isn't a great scenario
· By having 4 Super Rugby teams with squads of 40 players means that we can afford our fringe as well as our international players to stay in SA. Each Province will obviously contribute players from their provincial team. Those on central contracts will simply go back to their provincial team during the international season
· All centralised contracted players should play in our Franchises and it is up the Franchises to talk with one another about which players they should be using. In doing this, we won’t see the likes of Bulls , Sharks or Stormers sitting on good players but only keeping them on the bench or hardly playing.
· This will also give the players the freedom to move around to get the most game time to develop.
· Franchises will need to make sure that they have a great environment and opportunity for players to hang around
· Players that gets invited to Springbok training camps, tours and test caps will obviously get a massive cash boost and rewarded for becoming an elite player.
· This means that we will have genuine competition amongst the players as the reward is there.
3. Centralised Coaching Structure
· We seem to discard coaches too often, but at the same time a lot of SA coaches comes with big egos. There are school coaches that gets paid a million rand wages for just coaching a school team.
· Same as the players, coaches need and environment where they can grow and prosper and should not be owned by the provinces but belong to the franchises. All Franchise coaches will get the chance to cut their teeth at the provinces and progress into the franchise ranks.
· The national coaches will also have more influences over the franchises coaches and what new plays should be tried out against opposition teams. For example Oumar Mounamine, seem to know how to defend against Baueden Barret. This was evident when the Hurricanes thrashed the Lions but came unstuck by the Sharks. Having a brain trust that feed our franchise coaches of how to defend against the New Zealand or Australian teams will mean that our players will become more confident when they start beating these teams.
· The other problem that we are seeing with the Provinces coaching structure is that the coach like Franco Smith coaches the Cheetahs and have currie cup success. He then goes onto Super Rugby and fails miserably to get the cheetahs to compete, but his province has drunk the cool aid and belief that he needs more time in order to make an impact. The same applies to AC, who is at best a currie cup coach and not a Super rugby coach. Plumtree coached the sharks but didn’t have what it takes to make it as a super rugby coach. He went back to NZ and became an assistant to the hurricanes. It is very rare coach can actually transfer a team and often it’s about team culture.
