Less may be more

Picking up on the Super 12 beat this year one of the most noticeable things has been the large number of players struggling to shake off injuries of various degrees of gravity.

Many of them are still in rehabilitation following surgery while others thought they were fine but their injuries flared up the moment the intensity of the work picked up or their coaches introduced contact sessions.

And there’s the key word – contact.

Rugby is a contact sport in which strong, heavy and supremely fit athletes collide with each other. And like, motorcars, when that happens they pick up dents and the more it happens or the higher the impact the more serious it gets. Eventually they break.

The amount of players nursing quite serious injuries at this moment – at the outset of the season – is alarming and those I speak to, the players themselves, their coaches, their doctors and their fitness experts, all agree on one thing…

The season is too long. Players are expected to perform in too many strenuous games, too often over too long a period. They are not given proper time to rest and they never get the chance to do intensive strengthening work on their joints (or the muscles and tendons that support them) to counteract the consequences of all those bone-jarring crashes.

This is something we have known for some time. Medical men and rugby men, who are often poles apart on the issues of the game, agree that players simply play too much.

Yet it seems the problem is not being addressed and many players feel as though they are mere foot soldiers being ordered to charge out of the trenches into a hail of bullets where the question is not whether you’ll be hit, but when.

This was brought home to me yet again when I’d gratefully dodged my way unscathed through one of Johannesburg’s most notorious hijack alleys to watch the Cats practice at the Johannesburg Stadium – probably the only sports team in the world who have a modern stadium, complete with tartan track and fully-equipped gym, as their practice venue!

I had been chatting to a member of the back-up team about the physical state of the players after their all too brief break and he mentioned that while they seemed eager and fired up he was concerned that they had not had enough time to complete a concerted strengthening programme.

The next day Joe van Niekerk, one of the most valuable young properties (for that’s what they are!) in world rugby, took a tackle on the side of the knee and hurt his tendons. A freak accident or might the injury have been prevented had he had a longer period of specific strengthening exercises? Is Van Niekerk, 22, perhaps too young to withstand the demands being placed on him? Was his injury inevitable?

Certainly, as an ANC politician might say, those “on the ground” that I speak to are adamant that there is too much rugby and are concerned that the problem is not being addressed.

There seems to be a mindset that the season cannot be changed because of financial and contractual considerations but I wonder…

Here are some ideas. Do away with the Tri-Nations every year and stage it in the years between the world cups with a return to tours in the other years. Thus we could have the World Cup in 2003, there could be a tour in 2004, followed by the Tri-Nations in 2005, followed by tours in 2006 and the World Cup again in 2007, and so on.

Tours would have the benefit of developing the next echelon of players – if you want to know if a man has what it takes put him out in the Bok jersey on an arctic Tuesday against a bunch of tough New Zealand fishermen and farmers in Invercargill! – while longer gaps between the Tri-Nations will impart an aura of anticipation to the tournament.

Next… cut the Super 12 back to the Super 10. Not only will that save at least three weeks in the season but also it would suit South Africa by making the problems of travel less onerous while concentrating the talent required. Another compelling reason in favour is the fact that in the days it was the Super 10 South African teams reached all three finals and Transvaal won it ’93.

Also… stop touring to the northern hemisphere every year and certainly not in the year ahead of the World Cup. Better still go there on a long visit in the years we are slated to tour instead of the current situation when our players are dead tired and battered to a pulp by the time they stagger into Twickenham. Go there seldom, with more chance of winning and ask for a bigger cut of the gate, I say.

Dump the Vodacom Cup and replace it with a massive, knockout club competition, backed by the same generous sponsor, along the lines of the FA Cup in English soccer. Clubs (any club) could enter, play in regions and then go forward to televised play-offs at centralised venues.

This would not only breathe much-needed new life into club rugby but would expose a legion of players who might never get such a chance rather than the current situation in which provinces have to run over-large squads to be able to play in a competition that no-one needs or wants.

Get rid of at least one of the mid-year tests – something that would be quite simple if there were no Tri-Nations looming. Internationals against the All Blacks and the Wallabies are so frequent that they are becoming like one-day cricket tests – totally lacking in expectation and a sense of occasion.

The television contracts? Perhaps less of a problem than rugby administrators believe because the big provincial Saturdays (remember when Northern Transvaal at Loftus was referred to as the fifth test?) coupled to a test series has the variety and crowd potential to exceed the numbers produced by the overplayed Tri-Nations.

Obviously these are just ideas, a framework, but they would trim four weeks off the season – four weeks which might be crucial to the well-being and success of our top players.