Rassie was forced into a corner

There was a sense of savage irony to the timing of Rassie Erasmus’s exit from Western Province rugby. It throws an early spotlight onto a subject which, if the game is to grow and flourish both in the Cape and wider South Africa, demands close scrutiny this year.

Understandably, the question relating to the identity of the next Springbok coach is the January rugby topic of conversation. It became that when the administration dragged their heels on the appointment and postponed the announcement until a full month after their New Zealand counterparts had done the same.

But shouldn’t the focus instead be on who appoints the coaches and employs them? At the start of this new four-year cycle up to the next World Cup, shouldn’t a bigger stress also be placed on sweeping away the uncomfortable situation that develops when you have amateur administrators making key decisions that impact on a professional game?

One of the best points that Victor Matfield made in his book, My Journey, related to the paucity of true professional rugby people in the administration of the sport. Unfortunately, Victor stopped short of making it the big issue it may need to become if the sport he loves is going to ever reach its full potential.

It’s now nearly two decades since rugby became a professional sport. But in this country too much power, both at provincial and national level, is still vested in amateur office bearers who do not work full-time in the sport and thus are not as conversant in the trends and needs of the modern game as they should be.

Many of the amateur administrators are well-meaning, and yes, they give off a lot of their time to serve the sport. It is a fact though that in 2012 professional rugby operates in a different world to the club level that spawns them.

And a successful professional rugby concern is never going to grow out of the petty infighting among amateur officials that continues to blight WP rugby in particular but which, for a long time, has done the same at national level.

Those who work on the professional side of WP rugby know they need to start ducking in the year when there is an election for amateur office-bearers. In recent seasons it has not been unusual for prospective office-bearers to do their electioneering by slamming their own coaches through the media in a quest for populist appeal.

Having gotten wind of the clashes that were taking place behind the scenes at WP before Christmas I expected there to be an explosion sometime after my return from summer holidays, but I never expected it to happen quite this quickly.

Of course the WP marketing people, in confirming the Erasmus resignation, have put a positive spin on everything. The official line is that Erasmus is looking for a future elsewhere, but that is bunk, just as the theory that Erasmus and Allister Coetzee don’t get on is also bunk. Erasmus and Coetzee did have a small fall-out around the time of the 2010 Currie Cup final, but that was sorted out ages ago and they have worked well together in the past year.

Those who know Erasmus and the passion he had for his chosen mission to make WP a champion union will rightfully heap scorn on any suggestion that, after taking the Stormers from 11th in the Super 12 (the year before he arrived) to second in Super Rugby in two in consecutive seasons he would suddenly decide to leave.

He was pushed by people who made his job untenable, in the same way that England coach-elect Nick Mallett, when he was WP coaching director, was also pushed by the same people. If, as expected, Mallett takes over at England, don’t be too surprised if he approaches Erasmus to be his technical analyst. That’s how highly he rates him.

Gert Smal, who could soon be the new Springbok coach, is another who fell foul of the same group of administrators. So the question is – if these people can be so highly rated elsewhere, why are they not good enough for WP? But then maybe the question should instead be directed at why after 11 years of trophy drought in the Western Cape it is only coaches who get scrutinised and not the people and the system that employs them…