SARU needs to stop ball watching and come up with a game plan to preserve quality rugby in South Africa.
Netwerk24 reported that as many as three Saffas could turn out as new caps for Scotland during this year’s Rugby World Cup. They are Alan Dell, WP Nel and Josh Strauss. Dell was a SA Schools prop out of Queen’s College who jumped ship shortly after his Sharks junior rugby days ended. Another SA Schools star, CJ Stander from Oakdale is edging closer to Ireland eligibility with 30 October 2015 being his IRB residency qualification date. These players aren’t big losses to SA rugby but they are part of a trend that suggest that more and better opportunities now lie abroad and that the days of top players first making a name for themselves in SA rugby before going North are numbered. A perfect example and potentially a much bigger loss to SA rugby is that of Ermelo’s SA Schools and SA u20 Junior World Champs star Jacques du Plessis, who has decided to move to Montpellier at the end of the 2015 season.
A few weeks back a SARU spokesman expressed concern about good young rugby players who after finding their path to the top in local rugby being impeded to an extent, opted to leave SA in order to take up rugby career offers abroad. This situation has been in the making for years now and really should not be taking anyone at SARU by surprise. This is the thing though, South African rugby may by no means be seeing the end point of the evolution of European rugby. For all we know this process of young players leaving when they are barely out of their teens might still at the tip of the iceberg. The next logical step up in terms of growth for European clubs is bigger and better. Get the top players into their leagues closer to their prime and grow their youth systems to acquire the best age-group youngsters. That could see top schoolboys finishing their studies at rugby academies in the Northern Hemisphere in the not too distant future. That kind of process could gain momentum as fast as an avalanche does. What SARU needs is to do is find out just how many of our better players the wealthier rugby nations can absorb and come up with a plan of action to either produce more quality players in SA so that there is enough left over for our own market or come up with a restructuring solution that allows our local rugby to somehow benefit from the changes happening, something which up until now have seemed to be out of SARU’s control. The situation is not being treated as crisis management but it’s getting there faster than most of us want to believe.
FYI: Wikipedia definition of a soccer youth system: “Most youth systems attached exclusively to one club are often called youth academies. In a youth academy, a club will sign multiple players at a very young age and teach them football skills required to play at that club’s standard.”
Not too long ago South Africa was described as the most powerful member of SANZAR. But what happens to that so called power if the South African rugby public’s interest in local competitions starts to decline because all the best players ply their trade abroad. Do the sponsors of the Super Rugby competition still attach as much value to a competition in which a key member can’t guarantee the same high standard or public interest due to it’s drained quality and will the other two major members New Zealand and Australia still want to be part of a franchised rugby partnership with a country whose weakened teams no longer have crowd pulling power. The downward spiral could be a quick one for SA Rugby. The worst case scenario in a few years time could be no quality players of any kind in SA, close to empty stadiums for matches, a rugby community slash TV audience majority that are more interested in following club games in Europe than anything local, drastically reduced sponsorship deals, exclusion from a competition against the best teams from Australia and New Zealand, and no firm plan to be incorporated into a European competition – something that already seems logistically impossible due to the Northern Hemisphere clubs wanting to follow a typical one match at home, one match on the road league cycle as opposed to tours.
Sorry this was a bit of stuck record post because it’s been covered before in a blog called Bleak Future for Quality Pro Rugby in SA were there is an interesting case study about what happened to the once great Dutch Football League.
I always felt the promotion/relegation element of the original S10 format – based on Currie Cup log positions was good. All before major franchises etc.
I also enjoyed the old Lion Cup format where the minnows had a chance of hosting and beating a Test Union was also great
@Woltrui: agree with you.
bring back the old format of S-rugby and make it 14 teams
We all know what the problem is. The commodity is getting over cooked. To many games=boring=less money.
American Football: 3 or 4 Home games per season. Maybe 12 games per team per season. Season maximum 3 months. Advertisers and everybody jump in to get a piece of the action=huge returns for the franchises and players.
South Africa 10 months of Boring rugby. Stadiums empty. Low salaries for players.
Solution: SA rugby season 3 months: Any player who want to be eligible for the Boks must play in SA. The rest of the season they can play in Timbukto or where ever for who ever is prepared to pay for their services.
@rugbyfan: @badboy: Its not just the salaries. Of course, what makes the salaries elsewhere look attractive, is the weakness of the SA currency, the SAR. And the prognosis is not good, The weaker the Rand, the more attractive the salaries, abroad, become. And before I am accused of sucking things from my thumb, Magnus Heystek, a well respected economist, predicted that within 2 yrs, he expects the Dollar = 20 Rand . Im slightly less optimistic, but then, Im not a well respected economist. BUT, I did predict 2007 !!
@rugbyfan: Well for interest sake at this last years SANZAR meeting New Zealand put forward a Super Rugby structure which would have gone along the lines of 20 teams were there would be 2 division’s. SA would have 7 teams NZ 6 teams and Aus 5 teams and Arg 1 and Pacific 1.
As such the first year the 1st Division would have been the top 10 teams from the Super Rugby Log and the 2nd Division would have been the other 5 Super Rugby Teams + the new teams. In each division the teams would play each other once with a semi final and final. The team that won the 2nd div + the team that came next on the log would go up and the two teams at the bottom of the 1st division would go down.
Now why did they not go for this it make sense but yes guess who shot this out the water SARU. And now we stuck with some rubbish from next year onwards.
We are or should I say SARU is our worst enemy they will destroy our rugby.
I think what BOG says might just come true.
Most players even in Japan get paid better than ours.
Now go to New Zealand was there 2 years ago and were I was based the local team was Kings Country RC now basically they a small team in the second division there better players go onto to play in the 1st league for other teams.
But there ground is very small maybe seats 7000 people but in that year they played 11 games at home and there total gate was around 72 000 seats paid for. Basically full for every game, I doubt the Kings got that many people through there gates last year.
So it shows we love rugby but only the big teams get any attendance and that pays the bills and salaries.
Also economically we cannot compete in one week between Britain and France rugby there was a attendance of 436 231 paying people who went through the gates to watch some form of 1st Div or 2nd Div game. Now I doubt we get that many people through the gates of the whole Super Rugby Season in SA.
So we have know chance.
I think what we should look at is, is there enough money in SA rugby to keep this talent here. We have 5 Super Rugby teams who pay a decent wage. In Europe you have 27 big clubs were at least 10/15 of them pay a much better wage than our Super rugby teams do. And the other 12 or so plus 25 second division teams pay better than any Currie Teams. So do the math’s we push out a lot more talent than we need so the people leave.
And it is not only rugby players that leave the country in masses…. Seems like we are in for some dark times!
@BOG: Just had a look.
Add the US to the list of opportunities for young rugby talent from SA.
I must say, Arkansas State Uni, must be half South African by now. A lot of young athletes going there.
@valke: If you go onto GCBs FB, you will see a picture there of 3 OBs, playing college rugby in the USA. Two, I dont know, but one, played first team last year.
@BOG: I think you are 100% correct.
We can already see it with the big unions showing less and less attendance at their stadiums every year, and local rugby getting so watered down that people do not want to go and watch it.
Most young rugby players I talk to are waiting for an opportunity to go and play abroad. I talk to 17/18/19 year olds talking about second tier rugby in France and the rest of Europe, rather than working through the ranks in SA.
The reasons for this are endless.
The only rugby still getting support locally is Super Rugby ( and maybe CC semi and final ), and with the level of most our SA teams, not sure that this will last either.
Players would rather play Varsity Cup than Vodacom Cup.
Vodacom Cup ; U21 ; u19 etc… are getting no support, or exposure, at all.
Steven Kitshoff is on his way to France at the end of October………according to his agent it’s not about the money but to gain valuable experience. I think we have heard that one before.
Two years ago,when I said that not too long into the future, SA could find itself in a new 3 Nations- with Zim and Namibia, I was mocked. And now? If things continue as they are, it could even be with Swaziland and Lesotho.