A triumph for negotiation

It is amazing what can be achieved through a little negotiation and willingness to listen and compromise.

Just 10 days ago it seemed that SA Rugby and some of the affiliates of the South African Rugby Football Union were headed for what would have been a highly damaging stand-off over the new Currie Cup system.

But the wise heads prevailed at the recent Sarfu AGM and a compromise was sought and found. It is hard to imagine that anyone can be really put out at the new proposal, which will be officially ratified and adopted in January.

The strength-versus-strength principle, which the bigger unions have fought for for several years, has not been compromised.

An eight team elite Currie Cup, to be known as the Premier Division, will provide the intensity of competition which South African rugby needs if fans are to come through the turnstiles in sufficient numbers to keep the bigger stadiums viable.

We know this from the experience of the Currie Cup Top Eight in recent years. The extended quarterfinal stage always provided entertaining and competitive rugby, and the fans turned out to watch it.

What we will have next year and the season following it is an extended Top Eight, the main difference being that all the teams will play against one another and they will do so on a home and away basis.

This column argued some time ago that an eight team elite Currie Cup was a better idea than a six team premier league. There are not enough players of sufficient quality in South Africa to support a 14-team mainstream, but there are enough to support eight.

The addition of the two extra teams also gives the smaller unions in the lower tier something to aim at. A six team Currie Cup, considering the superior buying power of the big city unions, would have developed into an annual merry-go-round for those provinces lucky enough to join the Blue Bulls, Lions, Natal, Free State and Western Province in the top flight.

Already the Pumas, who would have been the country union representative in a six team competition, have been weakened by the loss of star players such as Brent Russell (Sharks), Pierre Uys (WP) and Marco Wentzel (Free State).

The prospect of them surviving once the automatic promotion/relegation system had clicked in in 1994 was minimal. And had they somehow managed it, it is arguable that having one of the bigger unions drop into the lower echelon would not have been in the best interests of South African rugby.

Several years ago Natal were promoted from what was then the B Section of the Currie Cup on the basis that they were too important to SA rugby from a commercial point of view for them to languish in the lower league for any longer.

The same principle should be recognised now. Pick 'n Pay do not build stores in areas supporting a population of less than 100 000 and it is hard to see why this should be any different when it comes to the business of rugby.

The WP experience in the recent Currie Cup was an example of how easy it is for even a rich union to go through a bad patch. Don't try and tell me it would be good for our rugby to have the rugby public of Cape Town denied top class games for however long it would take for them to get back into the top league.

An eight team league makes it less likely that this would happen, and it also gives those in the lower league a better chance of survival when they are promoted. At least now the Pumas will have matches against the Falcons and one of Griquas or SWD Eagles to look forward to in amongst their games against unions with three to seven times more spending power than themselves.

I remain convinced that eight teams is the ideal, but we have to recognise that there is only so much space in a rugby season. The people who draw up the fixture lists have their work cut out fitting it all in.

Which is why it is understandable that the league will be cut to seven teams in 2005, when a promotion relegation game will be reintroduced rather than the automatic promotion/relegation which was initially envisaged.

This game also makes sense. Why make promotion automatic when the team finishing top of the first division may be inferior to the team finishing bottom of the premier?

To establish which team deserves to be in the premier league it is necessary that they play one another. Introducing the concept of the neutral venue will erase the obvious advantage that one of the teams would have had if they had been allowed to play at home.

Natal's inability to extricate themselves from the B Section in the 1980s was almost entirely due to the fact they had to play the promotion games in Welkom, where the miners of Northern Free State always raised their game and the white collar workers of Durban and Maritzburg invariably floundered.

Yes, Griquas coach Swys de Bruin also has a point when he says his union over the past few years has been consistent enough to guarantee top eight status, along with the Falcons.

But he can console himself with the thought over the Christmas break that he and his players have far more to look forward to in 2003 than appeared likely two weeks ago.