Time to club together

Meeting up with some of my boyhood heroes at the inauguration of the Villager Rugby Football Club’s unique new field in Cape Town recently brought home to me to what extent modern structures have damaged the fabric of rugby.

Villagers’ new field, now full-sized after an embarrassing error of measurement had originally left it too small, is neatly contained within a modern office complex and fittingly Hamiltons RFC, South Africa’s oldest club, was invited to play the second oldest in the country’s longest standing derby to mark the occasion of its being taken into use.

Thus were celebrated 130 years of rugby tradition and I had the opportunity to meet up with John Gainsford, a much-revered player whose autograph I sought with cheeky determination in Richmond in the Karoo some 40 years ago, and two other members of the great 1960/61 team who toured Great Britain and France in Dave Stewart and Lionel Wilson.

Gainsford, who called his autobiography “Nice Guys Come Second,” has some forthright views about the state of South African rugby and the erosion caused by officialdom’s disregard for the role that can be played by clubs.

Four-and-a-half decades ago Villagers supplied no fewer than six players to the Springbok touring side – Gainsford, Stewart, Wilson, the legendary No8 Doug Hopwood, flyhalf Charlie Nimb and hooker Bobby Johns was sent over as a late replacement. (Gainsford, incidentally played in 26 of the 34 tour matches, including nine of the last 10, in a tour that lasted from October 1960 to February 1961!)

That was the contribution of one of the top “open” clubs with great numbers drawn from the university powerhouses of Stellenbosch, Pretoria and Free State – not to mention the immense contribution made to Springbok rugby by the various Forces teams; the Bobbies, Defence and Prisons.

But the team also contained the like of Lofty Nel and Fanie Kuhn, who played for the West Rand club, Avril Malan and Hennie van Zyl, who were at Diggers (a club who once supplied 14 out of 15 players to the Transvaal team), Dick Lockyear and Ian Kirkpatrick from Kimberley RFC, Giepie Wentzel from Crusaders in Port Elizabeth, Keith Oxlee from Durban Collegians, Mike Antelme, University of the Witwatersrand and Piet van Zyl who came from Porterville in the Boland.

These players actually played for their clubs – Gainsford recalling that a Villager vs Stellenbosch “derby” could draw a crowd in excess of 30,000 to Newlands – unlike the modern generation who gather multiple test caps without ever turning out for, or even going to a club.

In the last few months I have also been in touch with clubs such as College Rovers in Durban, Tukkies in Pretoria, Pirates in Johannesburg and Hamiltons in Cape Town and there is a universal message that club rugby is dying or, worse, has died, and all of them blame a lack of support, or even interest, from on high.

The consequence of the decay of club rugby is the removal of a crucial rung in the ladder to the top; stripping South African rugby of any number of talented youngsters who slip through the mesh because of the realities of professional rugby.

The need to contract young players at ever younger ages means that if a player is injured as he moves from his teens into his 20s, or is a late bloomer who does not reach physical maturity until later, he is lost to the game because there is no place, or vibrant competition, where he might develop his skills.

Saving club rugby is fraught with political tensions – as always caused by considerations of race and background – but it is inexcusable that administrators have let it crumble to the extent it has; squandering what could be an enormous resource.

A stock answer from officials is that nothing can be done because of the competition of other interests and pastimes but to me this is simply a cop-out.

If administrators had the will something could certainly be done to raise the visibility of competition between the tertiary institutions while I have long held the view that there is a better solution than the Vodacom Cup to occupy the time of the rest of the players while the so-called upper echelon are bumbling through the Super 14.

To me the Vodacom Cup has created an unnecessary fourth tier (after tests, the Super 14 and the Currie Cup) that has resulted in the game being burdened by too many professional players and auxiliary personnel rather than channelling these funds and energies into the club game.

Why not offer Vodacom, the most generous of sports sponsors, another option that would involve a broader band of players and their communities the chance to stride a bigger stage rather than a quasi competition that, to my mind, cheapens provincial colours?

Without going into great detail what of a massive club competition run on the lines of the FA Cup? Any club could enter and in the initial stages it could be run on a regional basis with winners qualifying to go forward to national play-offs.

Consideration could even be given to certain centres – Nelspruit, Oudtshoorn, Wellington, George, East London – entering as a city or town to be able to take on the stronger clubs.

Then, once the winners of the regional competitions have emerged, (and it would not be too hard too work out a formula with numerically strong regions having more qualifiers than the far-flung areas), the matches could be played as curtain-raisers to the Super 14 and also televised.

For instance, the aim should be to have 32 clubs left in the tournament. This would result in 16 matches, followed by 8 etc until the Grand Final when the two top clubs would meet in a highly publicised play-off to decide South Africa’s champion club.

I have no doubt that clubs would be energised, new colours and regions would be showcased, players would get the chance to play at stadiums they can only dream of, others would be drawn back to the game and any number of potentially top-class players would come to the fore.

That’s my idea. There may be others but one thing is for sure – for the sake of Springbok rugby it is time South African rugby clubbed together.