Ken Borland

Technology has allowed players to be tracked in detail now throughout the 80 minutes of a rugby match and every individual contribution is measured and analysed. One man who would have featured in almost all categories for the Bulls in their weekend demolition of the Sharks was rookie loose forward Elrigh Louw.

Given that they won 41-14, the Bulls were understandably dominant in terms of the game statistics – they enjoyed 52% possession and 53% territory, they ran for 367 metres compared to 223, beat 20 defenders compared to just 13 by the Sharks, and made 14 clean breaks while the opposition could only make two. The Bulls also won twice as many turnovers, and completed 86 of their 99 tackles, with 73 of those being dominant hits. The Sharks made 79 tackles, 59 of them being dominant, and missed 20.

And the 21-year-old Louw contributed plenty of carries, made valuable metres, tackled ferociously and even had time to win turnovers and make a couple of offloads. He was also a lineout option in a dominant set-piece for the Bulls.

Snapped up from the Southern Kings last month after they went bust, Louw seems in many ways an old-fashioned forward who keeps things simple and he is learning plenty from playing alongside Springbok great Duane Vermeulen.

“When I was at high school at Transvalia in Vanderbijlpark, Duane was the player I looked up to, I used to follow his every step and I wanted to be like him as a player, so to be here at the Bulls with him is a dream come true. I just try and be a sponge and take in everything, and it’s a real privilege to be playing with Springboks like Duane and Marco van Staden.

“I think we connected well as a loose trio, we were stealing balls, being a nuisance on the ground and we were physical in defence, so I think we complemented each other well. I just keep my head down and keep on grinding, I try and focus on my game and not other stuff. It has been a big move from Port Elizabeth but I’m sure it’s the right thing for my career,” Louw said on Monday.

The Pretoria-born Louw has made just the sole start in Super Rugby Unlocked but impressed to such an extent that people are already saying he could be a youngster who enjoys a long and successful career at Loftus Versfeld. He has settled in extremely well and made a good impression on both his team-mates and coach Jake White speaks highly of his talent and direct style.

“I’ve fitted in comfortably, it feels like I’ve been here for years because all of the coaches and players work so well together. In the space of two days me and all my stuff went from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria but one of the big reasons for the move was to be closer to home. I’m enjoying playing for the Bulls unbelievably much.

“I’ve accepted the challenge that no matter who we are playing against, we have to win and that means winning the small battles in the game, even though I don’t focus on my opponents,” Louw said.

Following the resignation of the rest of the Cricket South Africa Board on Monday morning, the Members Council will now focus their efforts on setting up an interim board comprised of fit individuals to steer the federation to their AGM on December 5 and also formulate a new Memorandum of Incorporation for the election of directors.

The three remaining independent directors and the last non-independent director, Free State president Zola Thamae, all stood down on Monday morning, following the weekend resignations of five of the non-independent directors on the Board.

With no Board now in place, the 14-strong Members Council is currently in charge of CSA and their first order of business is to set up an interim board, none of whom will be directors from the last four years and none of whom will be eligible for the new permanent Board once it is in place.

The Members Council will present their plans to sports minister Nathi Mthethwa later on Monday, ahead of their scheduled meeting with him on Tuesday, and they will also consult with Sascoc over the composition of the interim board.

While ensuring independent directors are a majority on the board is one of the major recommendations of the Nicholson Commission, a big focus of the Members Council will be in ensuring these independents are fit to serve cricket, because they have been disappointed with the level of contribution made by the independent directors in recent years.

“Everyone on the Board has now gone and we will now move forward with our interim board plan. We want to send the Minister a response before our meeting on Tuesday. We’ve opened communication with Sascoc, but we need to nominate people who will add value to cricket, we need to guard against people coming in who are not going to help CSA.

“We want to get that interim board as clean as possible and you can’t serve on that body and then be a Board member afterwards because that would be a conflict of interest and we don’t want people to be persuaded into doing things that are not for the benefit of the game. Knowledge of cricket is going to be key and the biggest question facing us is whether we want totally independent figures or cricket people,” a provincial president who sits on the Members Council told The Citizen on Monday.

The administrator confirmed that they were trying to convince a recently retired Protea of high standing to swop his whites for a tie and sit on that interim board.

Much of the blame for CSA’s mess can be laid on the shoulders of previous independent directors, on whom the Board depends for expert corporate governance advice, who did not ensure those running the organisation stayed on the straight and narrow.

The death knell sounded for the existing Cricket South Africa Board on Sunday with the resignation of five non-independent directors and the move to appoint a Board with much better practitioners of corporate governance can now gain pace, according a Members Council insider.

The resignations of acting president Beresford Williams and fellow directors Angelo Carolissen (Boland), Donovan May (Eastern Province), John Mogodi (Limpopo) and Tebogo Siko (Northerns) has left the Board with just one non-independent director in Zola Thamae and three independents – Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, Marius Schoeman and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile.

But they are expected to also stand down before Tuesday’s deadline set for CSA by sports minister Nathi Mthethwa, opening the way for an interim board to be appointed, which will complete the adjustments to the Memorandum of Incorporation that will change the composition of the Board. The major changes will see a majority of independent directors and non-independent directors will no longer also have a seat on the Members Council, as per the recommendations of the Nicholson Commission of Enquiry in 2012.

“Not all of the directors were happy to go, but they were basically told they had to, we forced them. We will now wait for the independents to resign, and if they don’t do that then we will deal with them quickly. An interim board will then be set up and we will take a suggestion as to how that should happen to the sports minister on Tuesday. And Sascoc will assist us with that.

“There may be one or two current members of the Members Council on that interim board, but we have decided that nobody who was in office in the four years between 2016 and December 2019 will be eligible,” the Members Council insider told The Citizen on Sunday.

It seems Anne Vilas of Central Gauteng cricket and KZN president Ben Dladla, two of the stars in the Members Council’s efforts to flex their muscle against the board, could be involved in that interim board because they have only recently been elected.

There are some doubts, however, that the interim board will be able to get the new MOI formalised before the AGM on December 5, leading to a possible delay in elections for the permanent new board.

It will be interesting to see how the new independent directors, who should make up the majority of the board, are elected because there have been some far-from-stellar appointments in the last few years. The independent directors that have been there have largely failed to intervene in the governance scandals that have plagued CSA and in some instances have actually made them worse.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt said he felt his team was still in good health at halftime as they only trailed the Bulls 9-17 in their Super Rugby Unlocked match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend, but the unrelenting physical bombardment of the home side eventually saw them subside to a 41-14 hammering.

The Sharks had actually had the better of the exchanges in the first half and they led until the 28^th minute when the Bulls scored the first of two quickfire tries before the break. Thereafter it was one-way traffic.

“There are no excuses, we started really well, but then we leaked two soft tries. But we still felt very much in the game at halftime, but the Bulls have a very good pack, big and physical, and they just wore us down in the second half. We had a dominant scrum until Thomas du Toit went off because of his calf, and we had a lot of go-forward in the first half.

“I like to think we also matched them in the loose in certain periods, but it was just our execution that let us down. The breakdown was going well when we had forward dominance in our carries, but I think the Bulls just outmuscled us a bit in the end and Marco van Staden is a great fetcher and not a Springbok for nothing. We were also not accurate enough in our kicking game,” Everitt said after the match.

Hooker Dylan Richardson was the outstanding player for the Sharks and scored a beauty of a try, after a lovely little dart by eighthman Sikhumbuzo Notshe, to keep the Sharks in the game at 14-24 down after 53 minutes. But the rest of the second half belonged to the Bulls as they scored three more tries. The lineouts were a particular area of concern for the Sharks as the Bulls stole a few balls against Richardson’s throw.

“Dylan’s general play was outstanding, he made lots of tackles and won three turnovers for us. It was a big step for him to move from openside flank in Super Rugby, but we feel hooker is a position he can excel in and his throwing is just a teething problem, that will get better with game time,” Everitt said.