Time to put rugby before gravy

So you think that Saturday's big Tri-Nations test at Ellis Park is the most important thing happening in South African rugby this week? Well, you are wrong.

By far the most significant moment of the week will come in Johannesburg a day before the Springboks take the field against the All Blacks. Friday is the day that the 14 provincial presidents are scheduled to meet to decide on the future structure of South Africa's provincial competitions.

What comes out of that meeting will have far reaching implications for the sport in this country. Indeed, if the portents are being read correctly and the amateur blazer wearers who have the main decision making power in this professional sport have their way, the meeting could well be a tantamount to a kiss of death.

All the early indications are that those in favour of returning to a 14-team Currie Cup competition will hold sway. The reasons for this should be obvious, and you just have to do your maths, and understand who Brian van Rooyen's main supporters are at the moment.

While the major, profit-making unions are desperate to retain the status quo, which means a two tier Currie Cup made up of a Premier Division and a First Division, the bulk of the rest have not changed their stance since the bosberaad earlier this year where it was first decided to overturn the decisions made per the Accenture Report.

This despite the fact, may I add, that even some of the chief executives of the smaller unions realise that a 14 team Currie Cup is unworkable and unsustainable, and that at the moment such a system demands more professional players than can be afforded. These people realise that making the rich poorer will just make South African rugby poorer, and that ultimately this will lead to the bottom falling out of the game.

But they are just people who work in rugby on a daily basis, professional people who know the ins and outs, what is possible and what is not; they know what it takes to run a professional sport, and as such may be guilty of being pragmatic and realistic.

This being South African rugby, however, the part-timers are still in charge at the top, and having spoken to a couple of them over the past few weeks, all I can say is they are a very special breed of people. For if you canvas the presidents, particularly those in the smaller provinces, you will come across this little chestnut: Money is not everything.

Huh?!! Maybe that attitude explains how we can now be on the verge of ditching the mass appeal, potentially lucrative strength versus strength system for a dispensation that will lead to many many boring Saturdays and some extremely empty stadiums when teams like the Griffons are visitors to places like Durban and Cape Town.

The Pumas appeared to make a statement for the smaller unions when they beat the Lions this past weekend. They also beat the Sharks during the under-strength early stages of the competition. But for goodness sake, they are not Boland or Border. They deserve to be in the top eight because they played their way into the top eight, and their performances now should not be used for the purpose of arguing that teams 13 and 14 on the pecking order should have a right to play in the competition too.

I was at Newlands earlier this year when what was basically a Western Province C team (WP A and B were with the Stormers) beat a full-strength Boland side in a Vodacom Shield match. What I saw left me in no doubt that the prospect of seeing a full-strength Province team (which by the way we have yet to see in this Currie Cup) playing against that bunch is not an appetising one. Frankly, if rugby was not my job, a visit to Newlands by a team like Boland or the Griffons would give me good reason to spend that weekend in Arniston.

That there has been an apparent waning of interest in the Currie Cup this season is chiefly because the top teams are playing so many matches without their Springboks. For instance, Newlands this past Saturday saw 18 000 people pitch for the WP match against the Blue Bulls, a figure which was significantly down on that for previous encounters between these two arch-rivals.

Yet the game itself was still played amidst an atmosphere and vibe that has been absent in fixtures against lesser opponents, and the quality of rugby produced, plus the intensity and passion in which the match was played, was a great advertisement for what could be delivered in a proper strength versus strength competition.

The strength versus strength competition as reintroduced last year, it has been pointed out in this column before, has already played a part in helping Jake White to turn the Springboks into a more competitive international team. Schalk Burger is an example of a player who was introduced to top rugby through the more competitive strength versus strength Currie Cup last year, and this played a role in helping him settle during his debut season in the Super 12 earlier this year.

There are several other players of whom the same can be said, and if you look at what has been done in South African cricket, where a strength versus strength system has been introduced to save the ailing provincial level of that sport, it would appear that the people who drew up the Accenture report are not the only ones who believe competitive domestic tournaments are the best way to create competent international players.

Sadly, however, it is debatable whether all the good men of the blazer brigade are in the game to create competent international players, or to give the public what they clearly want. Self preservation is the primary instinct, for extinction will surely bring about the end of gin and tonic circuit and the gravy train.

The selfishness which manifests itself among these people in their clamour to keep the good life was what prompted Morne du Plessis to resign from the board of SA Rugby earlier this year. It is also what has kept the game from flourishing in this country for the past decade or more. And it is what will push the game over the precipice if some sense of what is good for the game, rather than their beer boep, does not prevail among the officials who meet on Friday.