Why Mallett is right

There will probably be many who, when they heard that Nick Mallett is going to vacate his current position as Western Province Director of Rugby at the end of the season, would have wondered whether this was any loss to the union.

I have been in the company of many people who during the past two and a half years have mouthed off about Mallett’s contribution, or lack of contribution, to WP rugby in the time that he has been director. The theory goes that Mallett is great when he gets out onto the field and coaches, but is not suited to another role such as the one that he was employed to do at Province.

The legend goes that the WP administrators, when they first opened negotiations with Mallett, were hoping that in time his role would morph into that of head coach. This theory may have been vindicated by their latest decision to marry the position of Stormers head coach with that of director of rugby.

But those who judge Mallett’s performance as director of rugby on Stormers and WP results over the past few seasons have it wrong: The reality is that the former Springbok coach was on a hiding to nothing from the moment he took the job, and he never had a proper chance to prove the need for such a position in WP, and indeed in South African rugby as a whole.

When Mallett took the position, he envisaged it being a buffer between the administrators, many of whom don’t have any coaching acumen and hence shouldn’t really be qualified to hire and fire coaches, and the head coach. After his own experience as coach of the Boks, he felt that such a position was critical to give that coach a chance to stave off the inordinate amount of pressure brought to bear on South African top level coaches.

The way the position was couched initially, it was also supposed to be an executive position. In other words, the director of rugby would be the man responsible for the recruitment of players and coaches, these responsibilities would be taken away from the administrators and the elected officials.

Even the administrators probably intended it to be like this, for in those early days, whenever I tried to phone Rob Wagner, the Stormers chief executive, to ask him about matters relating to player or coaching recruitment, he would refer me to the director of rugby.

However, it was later to develop into a laughable situation, for while someone like Wagner would refer me to Mallett, Mallett would then refer me back to Wagner. Who was taking the decisions?

On reflection, it seems neither of them were, for the latest developments underline the simple truth, which is that the power in WP rugby still resides with the elected officials, the part-timers. Rugby has been a professional sport in South Africa now for 12 years, but it is still run by committee, much like it was in the amateur era.

Mallett, in his two and a half years as director, has never been in a position where he can be held accountable, for the simple reason that it was not he who made the decisions. For instance, he wanted to fire Kobus van der Merwe after last year’s Super 14, but he was not allowed to. He was told to give the Stormers coach one more year, and if, as appears likely, Van der Merwe is not coach for the next Super 14, then the sad reality for WP and the Stormers is that they have been marking time for 18 months.

When Mallett tried to approach outside players, he always had to go through the committees to get it rubber stamped, and he was often asked why he was going outside the province when there were young club players who deserved an opportunity.

This process was not streamlined enough, it was not professional enough, and it was not the procedure that Mallett became accustomed to in France, where clubs are owned by top businessmen. In Europe, these owners are the only people the coaches or director of rugby are answerable to, and when they want to recruit players, they just go to the owner who says yay or nay when it comes to the money needed to buy a new player in.

This really is the way it should be in South Africa too, at least if the game wants to be run on proper professional lines. Everything does need to become more streamlined, quicker and more efficient, which is why Mallett is right when he says that WP are going to continue to struggle if they don’t give the director of rugby greater powers.

And South African rugby as a whole will be held back as long as the trend of elected officials running the game in trust continues. The demands of the professional game may require a new approach.