What’s wrong with SA Rugby

Now this could be a question: What’s wrong with SA Rugby? Or a statement: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with SA Rugby.

So instead of resorting to the “if I had a R1 for every time…” response let me try to provide an answer.

Frik du Preez, someone who should know a little about SA rugby, recently stated: “If you have a system and the system doesn’t deliver you must change the system.”

And that, after yet another Super Rugby tournament in which our teams failed to deliver, goes to the core of what’s wrong with SA Rugby.

The fact is that the way the game is currently structured is not producing the kind of player (or coach, or administrator) able to excel at the very top level.

And the key reason, apart from the very real tribulations caused by the institutionalised racial transformation that is a fact of almost every facet of life in South Africa, is that local rugby was, figuratively, left on the platform when the Professional Express left the station.

The advent of professionalism changed the dynamics of every area of the game and SA Rugby, whether through arrogance or ignorance, either failed to grasp the new realities, or misunderstood them, or were rendered incapable by changing circumstances, and made serious mistakes in trying to move with the times.

Thus a structure that had sustained South African rugby for just over 100 years, even through the era of isolation, rapidly became outdated and inappropriate – especially because a unique set of circumstances existed in this country.

On the one hand there was the need to come to terms with the effects and needs of being professional but on the other this crucial time in the life of the sport coincided with South African moving from a restrictive political system into a new democracy.

The challenge to South African rugby (indeed all local sports) was therefore not only to react to a new set of circumstances in the way the sport would be run but also to cope with and react to the radical changes taking place in society.

The goals of SA Rugby were thus very different to those of our traditional opponents. While other countries concentrated on being better into the professional era, South African rugby, overtly and often unfairly targeted by government, had to cope with fundamental societal transformation way beyond the ken of rugby administrators who, let’s face it, were not prepared or qualified to deal with either professionalism or egalitarianism.

The upshot was that from a rugby point of view South Africa fell behind as other countries, especially the other members of the Big Five, England, France, New Zealand and Australia, concentrated on gaining the most from total dedication to the game by fulltime players by getting bigger, stronger, faster and better.

Against this SA Rugby was often side-tracked by political considerations and took a long time, and seems to still be struggling, to appreciate to what extent the advantage of a century of rugby of being naturally bigger and stronger than the rest, the quality that enabled us to “subdue and penetrate” for so many years, had fallen away. To put it in another way countries like England (under Martin Johnson!) had ceased to be fearful of the Springboks; they were as big as we were, they were as strong, perhaps even stronger, and they were no longer willing to submit to bullying tactics.

And, having identified the need for size, other countries set about driving up the quality of coaching which in turn impacted on the kind of player they were turning out in terms of skill and mental preparedness.

South Africa inevitably paid less attention to these areas while also entering into the Super and Tri-Nations tournaments as well as northern hemisphere tour agreements that resulted in a hopelessly crowded fixture list. This was not beneficial to the Springboks, put our players at a disadvantage in terms of travel and was simply not appropriate to the load the players could cope with.

All this was brought about by the advent of self-serving administrators, not steeped in the traditions of the games, who compounded the mistakes they made with some disastrous appointments at any number of levels; from coaching to management, from communication to administration.

These errors cascaded into our domestic competitions, making them less viable and vibrant, and rapidly accelerated the destruction of club rugby resulting in a situation whereby the game rests on an extremely flimsy foundation.

South African rugby is eternally complex and the answer to “what’s wrong with our rugby?” could probably be “everything!”

As Frik du Preez presciently observed, it is the system that is at fault and the great concern must be whether the leadership exists - given that many administrators who agreed to the crowded fixture list, who made the flawed appointments, who voted for the presidents who are now in disfavour, are still in place - to make the drastic changes needed to gain the most of the talent in our schools, to resolve the challenge of transformation, to restore club rugby, to trim the fixture list and make the Springboks No1 again.