Ken Borland

Sharks coach Sean Everitt is well aware of the threat posed by the Pumas, having suffered at their hands before, and has warned his team that if they don’t get their act together in their Super Rugby Unlocked match in Nelspruit on Saturday then they will suffer the fate the Stormers were fortunate to escape last weekend.

The Stormers scored a controversial 78^th-minute try at Mbombela Stadium last weekend to pip the Pumas 42-37, their third try in the last 10 minutes, while the Sharks were hammered 41-14 by a ultra-physical Bulls side in Pretoria.

“I wasn’t shocked by the Pumas’ game against the Stormers at all because I’ve been on the receiving end of that before. It’s always difficult to play in Nelspruit, they are always desperate and the players want to attract contracts from the bigger unions. The Pumas probably deserved to win that game and they will see themselves as being unlucky. We won’t be underestimating them.

“We’ve seen what they can produce, we know they are fighters, they will come with tremendous energy like desperate soldiers, that’s what Jimmy Stonehouse is able to get out of them. To keep professional rugby alive in a smaller union they need success and they’re fighting for their livelihoods and their franchise. We need a united effort and we need to get go-forward,” Everitt said this week.

Ideally, given the make-up of their team with a relatively light-weight loose trio and a dazzling backline, the Sharks will want to raise the pace and stretch the Pumas; a tight, forward-dominated scrap is not what they want.

But in order to give themselves the opportunity of playing the high-tempo game they favour, their pack has to put them on the front foot first, which requires a big effort in the set-pieces.

“The fundamentals of the game stay the same and maybe we could do with a bit more synergy in our tight five. Our defence has done really well, the guys are getting off the line quickly and disrupting, but the problem is more at the breakdowns. We’re not getting enough offensive carries because our body height isn’t right and the guys need to work harder against players who are bigger than them.

“The basics don’t change, neither do the position specifics, and if you don’t get set-piece parity then you can’t play. But I don’t think a Sharks team I’ve been involved in has ever underperformed due to a lack of respect for the opposition or a lack of effort in terms of work-rate, we never underestimate anybody. Give the Bulls some appreciation for how they played, and we just didn’t execute our plan the way we would have liked,” Everitt said.

The Pumas are arguably an even more disruptive opposition though and the Sharks need to be desperate in order to have a timely return to winning ways.

Teams

Pumas: Devon Williams, Neil Maritz, Erich Cronje, Wayne van der Bank, Etienne Taljaard, Fiela Boshoff, Ginter Smuts, Jeandré Rudolph, Willie Engelbrecht, Francois Kleinhans, Pieter Jansen van Vuuren (captain), Darrien Landsberg, Ruan Kramer, AJ le Roux, Liam Hendricks. Replacements (from) – Marko Janse van Rensburg, Stephan de Jager, Brendon Valentyn, Phumzile Maqondwana, Chriswill Willemse, Neil Marais, Ali Mgijima, Dewald Maritz, Daniel Maartens, HP van Schoor, Kwanda Dimaza.

Sharks: Manie Libbok, Sbu Nkosi, Lukhanyo Am (captain), Marius Louw, Madosh Tambwe, Curwin Bosch, Sanele Nohamba, Phendulani Buthelezi, Henco Venter, Dylan Richardson, Hyron Andrews, JJ van der Mescht, John-Hubert Meyer, Dan Jooste, Ox Nche. Replacements – Kerron van Vuuren, Mzamo Majola, Michael Kumbirai, Ruben van Heerden, Thembelani Bholi, Grant Williams, Jeremy Ward, Yaw Penxe.

Kickoff: 16h30.

The days of the Cricket Capturers using the game for their own benefit at their leisure would appear to be coming to an end after Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa on Friday announced a Cricket South Africa interim board of directors that boasts a fearsome array of skills to block the selfish ambitions of even the most determined of parasitic administrators.

Retired Constitutional Court justice Judge Zak Yacoob will chair the board and given the stature of the man and the moral leadership he has already brought to the country, malfeasance will be given short shrift under his watch.

It is especially pleasing to see Omphile Ramela, the president of the players’ union (the South African Cricketers’ Association), on the board. At just 32 years old, Ramela is still an active player, scoring 75 for Gauteng in his last match just before Lockdown, but it is probably fair to say that the best days of this former SA A batsman’s playing career are probably over. I have long felt that Ramela is just the sort of person the CSA Board needs – young, erudite, well-qualified (with a Masters degree in Economics) and with a strong cricketing background.

As Mthethwa stressed on Friday, Ramela will now need to step down as the president of SACA to avoid any conflicts of interest, but I am excited to see the contribution he can now make in the boardroom. He has been a brave, outspoken critic of CSA for a few years now, so I am sure that he will have a powerful voice on the interim board.

I am also delighted to see Judith February appointed. A lawyer by training and a governance expert, February works for the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Institute for Security Studies, while writing part-time for numerous publications on social and governance issues. Watching cricket seems to be one of her favourite recreations and, judging by her outstanding critiques of CSA in publications such as The Daily Maverick, she certainly has her finger on the pulse.

I was shocked – although also chuffed – to hear Haroon Lorgat’s name announced. As the previous CEO before all the shenanigans started at CSA, and a victim of what amounted to a coup by the Cricket Capturers, Lorgat probably is conflicted, but those who are up to no good in CSA will not be sleeping easy knowing that he is now on the interim board.

Knowing Lorgat’s assiduous attention to detail, he won’t be wasting any time either in presenting a formidable case for a large-scale clean-up to Yacoob and the other ‘independents’ nominated by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture – Caroline Mampuru, the deputy head of the Special Investigative Unit, and Stavros Nicolaou, a senior executive for a major pharmaceutical company.

One of the major criticisms of the previous directors of CSA and their enablers on the Members Council has been how lily-livered they have been in dealing with obvious flouting of good governance rules and even though one of the old guard, former Easterns president Xolani Vonya, has made it on to the interim board, I expect the recalcitrant administators who want to keep CSA as their own gravy train are going to wilt like pansies in the blazing heat of the subcontinent in the face of the integrity and quality of the rest of the directors.

The other Members Council nominations were Andre Odendaal, a good cricket man who has been involved at almost every level of the game – a first-class player, an administrator and a renowned historian, especially when it comes to Black cricket; and Andile Dawn Mbatha, a high-ranking financial official at the Independent Electoral Commission. A look at her social media makes one wonder if she is not just another Dr Eugenia – all I could see was expensive cars, lots of selfies, retweets of EFF posts and the occasional football mention – but let’s hope not. She is also listed on the National Treasury’s e-tender website as being the recipient of a government tender.

After the enormous con that the former Cricket South Africa Board has been, we can only cheer the good and capable people who have been willing to stand for this interim board and wish them all the best in cleaning up the mess, stench and decay of the boardroom that has become the public image of CSA.

They are obviously not going to be able to produce overnight miracles and the presence and obstinacy of so many of the old guard on the Members Council could slow the pace of reform, but the intervention of the Sports Minister does now seem to have borne some fruit.

Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa has already accepted that there is no way Cricket South Africa will be able to hold their AGM on December 5, but that does not mean the new interim board of directors he announced on Friday are there for a holiday.

Mthethwa tasked the interim board with completing their mandate within three months, although he did leave the door open for their term of office to be extended.

“The interim board need to hit the ground running and deal with the current governance and structural issues. They should aim to implement the Nicholson Commission recommendations, consider the Fundudzi Forensic Report and take the recommended action or whatever action they deem to be appropriate, review all board decisions made since 2019 and restore the integrity and reputation of CSA.

“They have three months to do this, but that may be extended based on their progress. We hope they will deliver because this group knows exactly what it has to do and the Members Council still has an obligation to ensure their work is moving well. But there is no way December 5 can remain as the date for their AGM, which could have been avoided if certain people had listened earlier,” Mthethwa said on Friday.

The new interim board of directors is chaired by Judge Zak Yacoob, a former justice of the Constitutional Court, and includes other ‘independent’ figures in Caroline Mampuru, the deputy head of the Special Investigative Unit, Stavros Nicolaou, a senior executive for a major pharmaceutical company, and Andile Dawn Mbatha, the chief financial officer of the Independent Electoral Commission.

But a trio of passionate cricket-lovers who have gone to town in recent times in their criticism of the organisation and the recently-resigned board have also found accommodation on the interim board.

The most astonishing appointment is that of Haroon Lorgat, who has been at the forefront of CSA’s critics and was the federation’s chief executive as recently as September 2017, before being deposed by the power bloc that included Thabang Moroe, whose tenure and subsequent suspension and firing have been central to CSA’s governance crisis. But Lorgat is an internationally-respected administrator who is a former CEO of the International Cricket Council and CSA was a stable organisation during his watch.

Omphile Ramela, the president of the South African Cricketers Association, has also been a strident critic of CSA on behalf of the players, while Judith February is a lawyer and governance expert for the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Institute for Security Studies, as well as a respected columnist who has also expressed her dismay over the administration of a sport she is clearly passionate about.

Andre Odendaal, the former CEO of the Western Province Cricket Association and the Cape Cobras, is another appointee, who has had a long history in the game as a first-class player, administrator and historian.

There is also a member of the old guard on the interim board in Xolani Vonya, the recently-resigned Easterns president who has been a strong supporter of both Moroe and company secretary Welsh Gwaza, who has been seen as a stumbling block to change at the organisation.

Vonya has been a controversial figure because the Easterns union have been wanting to get rid of him for many months, including holding a vote of no confidence against him, but Moroe and Gwaza gave him legal support to fight his removal.

Like all good coaches, Jake White does not like to elevate certain pool games to greater importance than others, but there has been an obvious lifting of the ante this week as the Bulls have prepared for the arrival of their arch-enemies, the Stormers, for their SuperRugby Unlocked match at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

The importance of the match – between two of the favourites for the title; the top-of-the-log Bulls against the unbeaten Stormers – has been shown by White providing his most obvious example yet of his famous mind games since he arrived in Pretoria.

And White’s focus has been on the importance of the forward battle, with some sledges thrown the Stormers’ way over his perception that they will field a bench with six forwards and just two backs, the veteran coach implying that this was a betrayal of Western Province rugby’s running-rugby traditions.

But there can be no doubt that the Stormers’ greatest strength is their scrum and, in particular, the first-choice Springbok front row of Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi and Steven Kitshoff.

“The win over the Sharks was a good performance and a massive confidence boost, but this is a really big game on Saturday, just given the history between the two teams and the intensity of the clashes before. The Stormers pride themselves on their scrum and maul and the forward battle is going to be really important and we know we have to match them up front.

“Last week, both our game and the Stormers’ bad game against the Pumas showed that rugby has not changed, the forwards are always the ones who win the game for you and this Saturday will be one of those games too. What we learnt from the Pumas match is that the Stormers use their scrum to get out of their own half, and with that front row that works for you,” White said.

Bulls captain Duane Vermeulen was also certainly looking forward to the arrival of his former team.

“They have a quality pack, that’s where it’s all going to go down. Their forwards really pulled them through against the Pumas, the momentum they got from the scrums allowed them to kick to touch and set up mauls. They may have a 100% success rate at scrum-time, but how many times has the scrum gone down? I think there have been lots of resets, but they know how to scrum.

“We’ve lost a couple of scrums, but we will keep building. We’re trying to work on our consistency as a whole, we’re not there yet and we had a slippery start, losing at the death against the Cheetahs. It hasn’t been the consistency we want, but this is a North versus South derby and hopefully we play better as both individuals and as a team,” Vermeulen said.

Stormers coach John Dobson has been extolling the super powers of Kitshoff, his stand-in captain now that Siya Kolisi is injured, but it is the character of the men from the Cape that has probably been their greatest virtue so far in holding on for victory against the Lions and the great escape in Nelspruit.

Teams

Bulls: David Kriel, Travis Ismaiel, Stedman Gans, Cornal Hendricks, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Morné Steyn, Ivan van Zyl, Duane Vermeulen (captain), Elrigh Louw, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje, Jason Jenkins, Trevor Nyakane, Johan Grobbelaar, Jacques van Rooyen. Replacements – Joe van Zyl, Gerhard Steenekamp, Marcel van der Merwe, Sintu Manjezi, Nizaam Carr, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Marco Jansen van Vuren.

Stormers: Warrick Gelant, Edwill van der Merwe, Dan du Plessis, Rikus Pretorius, Leolin Zas, Damian Willemse, Herschel Jantjies, Juarno Augustus, Ernst van Rhyn, Jaco Coetzee, JD Schickerling, Salmaan Moerat, Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Steven Kitshoff (captain). Replacements (from) – Scarra Ntubeni, Leon Lyons, Neethling Fouche, Chris van Zyl, David Meihuizen, Marcel Theunissen, Ben-Jason Dixon, Godlen Masimla, Tim Swiel, Angelo Davids, Tristan Leyds.

Kick-off: 19h00.