Hopefully confusion won't deflect focus

On the eve of the kick-off to the 2004 Super 12 we can look back on an off-season that provided much upheaval and movement in South African rugby but which has left far more questions than answers.

Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli has been replaced with Jake White and SA Rugby managing director Rian Oberholzer has resigned. This was supposed to represent the clean-out many had been hoping for, but at the end of three and a half months of controversy, many within rugby are wondering if this might not have been an instance where they should have stuck with the devil they knew.

After all, Oberholzer was not the only top rugby personality to resign during the off-season. The highly respected Morne du Plessis also did, and in doing so just two months after his appointment to the board of SA Rugby he left us under no illusion that there had been much change for the better.

But the questions the rugby public would love to see answered before the onset of the new season cannot be directed only at SA Rugby or at the new Sarfu president Brian van Rooyen.

Chester Williams, who is the latest man to have found himself buried in controversy, might enlighten us by explaining how it was that he used tokenism as an excuse for not making himself available for the Springbok assistant coaching role on Monday and then came back with a very different story at a press conference in Joburg on Wednesday.

And if tokenism was indeed the real reason for his eventual non-availability, why did he not withdraw back in December when he was first named on the shortlist for Bok coach? Were not the principles which inspired the first approach not the same ones that underlay the second?

Or is it a case of Williams being able to sacrifice his principles to be head coach, but not for him to be a mere assistant? And what of that about-turn which was brought to the public attention at the Wednesday press conference. Was it that he had been reminded by SA Rugby and Sarfu that the people he was criticising were in fact his employers?

Now if Williams does not get a 15-man job elsewhere at the end of the Super 12 season, what happens to him then? Does he go back to sevens, or does he just kick his heels for a few months before he starts preparing to coach the Cats in the Super 12?

But then who says he will be coaching the Cats in the Super 12? According to the new dispensation inspired by the Van Rooyen administration, there will be no regional teams representing South African interests in the Super 12 next year.

With the power returning to the provinces - provided of course they agree to pay the R5-million that has been asked of them - that means it will not be up to the national body to decide whether Williams can coach at Super 12 level next year.

No siree, the Cats will fall away, and the central Gauteng region would be represented in the Super 12 by the Lions, who the last time I looked had Frans Ludeke, and not Chester Williams, coaching them.

And Williams can forget about coming home to the Cape to grab himself a top Super 12 coaching job, for at this moment even new Springbok assistant Gert Smal must be in doubt about what he will be doing next February. Remember that he only coaches the Stormers, it is Carel du Plessis who coaches Western Province.

Which opens another can of worms, for it was on the understanding that he would be coaching the Stormers that Smal agreed to give up his former position as chief coach of the Streeptruie.

The line that he is still in a job because he is now officially the Springbok assistant is not an argument. Smal does not want to only be seen as an assistant, he wants to still be a head coach at either regional or provincial level.

When we get to Kwa-Zulu/Natal the situation becomes even more confusing. Up until relatively recently, the Sharks had successfully prevailed on SA Rugby to allow Kevin Putt to coach both the Super 12 side and the Currie Cup team (he was the only coach allowed to do so in 2003).

But now that the Sharks have finally decided to recruit a new man for the Currie Cup, along comes the Sarfu decision to change the whole system and entrench the four big city (or metropole) unions in the Super 12.

So do the Sharks appoint someone else to coach them in the Currie Cup, or do they stick with Kevin Putt in both competitions? It is something that they will have to make up their minds about quite soon, and it will all depend on whether or not a "decision" was made at the Sarfu bosberaad or not.

For even the reference to a "decision" being made appears confusing. The Sarfu president says one was made, and when they sit in front of the Sports Minister the four elected officials of the unions in question appear to agree that one was.

Not though when you speak to the different unions seperately, and particularly not if you go to the paid officials. No, according to the likes of Natal the "decision" referred to at the recent announcement at Eldorado Park took them by surprise. They even took the step of putting out a statement questioning the process, and their chief executive Brian van Zyl left no-one in any doubt when he addressed journalists at a recent media open-day in Durban.

The upshot of it all is that we go into the next edition of the Super 12 not entirely sure whether the Stormers brand which some have devoted the best part of the past few years building will even be around after this season. Fans don't know whether the black they will be wearing this year and which they have now become attached to will next year have to be exchanged for blue and white.

Ditto for the Cats, and whatever identity they may have at the moment. Next year it is red and white, or at least that is what we imagine from what we have been told.

But who can tell for sure? Maybe this time next month the whole situation would have changed, and rugby bosses would have issued a statement lambasting the media for making up fictitious stories about entrenchment of metropole unions and the return to a 14-team Currie Cup.

Confused? Of course you are. Let's just hope our top players don't share that confusion. With all the doubt over contracts and identities that is flying around the stratosphere at the moment, you can hardly blame the workers if they start the Super 12 with their focus just a little deflected.