Ken Borland

Another season of the Women’s Premier Division came to an end last weekend with the Bulls Daisies securing back-to-back titles, and the attention in local ladies rugby will now pivot to the newly-announced Super League professional franchise competition recently announced by SA Rugby.

While the Super League would be a boost for the growth of high-performance women’s rugby in South Africa, there are still pivotal questions around when it will start and how it will work, especially in terms of player contracting.

SA Rugby said they intend to contract 150 women players for the new competition, with the provincial unions being invited to submit proposals for inclusion of a franchise in the new Super League.

But the Bulls, who made a groundbreaking move to being fully professional last year, already have 35 players contracted and the vast majority of those will be offered new contracts on September 1.

SA Rugby want the Super League to begin in early 2025 and have said the “centrally contacted players will be shared out among the teams”. Unless the 150 given SA Rugby contracts don’t include any Bulls players, there is going to be a tug-of-war over the services of the players who have dominated the Women’s Premier Division over the last two seasons.

“We will entrench our players,” Thando Manana, the executive in charge of women’s rugby for the Blue Bulls Company, told Rapport. “SA Rugby say they are going to contract 150 players and although it is good to have this innovation, we need to tread carefully in our rush to get this Super League underway. There’s definitely going to be a timing issue if they want to start in January.

“I love anything that develops the game, but we can’t wait for all the details to come out, we will be renewing contracts for the new cycle that starts on September 1, and some of those will be extended to two or three years. We’re not looking at what others do, we will be pushing forward in the months ahead to take women’s rugby to another level,” Manana said.

Blue Bulls Rugby Union president Willem Strauss said he would rather reserve comment on the Super League until they have more information.

“I don’t know much about it, but anything that takes women’s rugby to the next level, I will support. But I need to know the details about the Super League, hopefully it aligns commercially with what we have done with such success over the last two years.

“As a board, we are very happy with what we have achieved in women’s rugby. It was a brave step to go professional in the women’s game because the financial impact was negative. But once we started performing then we started to attract commercial partners.

“Our team has improved a helluva lot and this year we had to use a lot of club players because of national team call-ups. But the number of women taking up the game has expanded by 30% per year, which is fantastic because it shows that going professional is sustainable. There are more and more women’s teams joining the league, as well as youth clubs, which shows that the ecosystem is healthy.

“Plus the Bulls Daisies bring a new audience to Loftus Versfeld which is very important, it’s not a traditional Pretoria crowd. The Bulls Daisies have certainly added value to our brand of excellence and they are inspiring the next generation of women’s stars,” Strauss told Rapport.

Lynne Cantwell, SA Rugby’s High Performance Manager for women’s rugby, praised the Bulls for their top-class programme and said the aim of the Super League was to get the rest of the country’s players to that level of excellence.

“The goal of the competition is to make that leap into where the performance standards align. Once we get there, all the teams will be more competitive and the women’s tournament will go down to the wire, we want to get to the situation where you never know who is going to win.

“The Bulls took that leap two years ago and have led the way, and we’ve seen their big performance leap. You have to give credit to Western Province, and the fact that they pushed the Bulls in the final is testament to their pipeline. There are great signs of growth, they are swelling their player numbers and Boland have done this as well.

“The goal is to have all our premier teams to be like the Bulls, and then that will make for a strong national team. The Super League will be performance-driven, and hopefully that means teams can ask more of sponsors, they can pitch higher because of increased visibility. That will drive game standards and allow teams to employ high-quality coaches, physios, medics and strength-and-conditioning coaches,” Cantwell told Rapport.

The former Ireland star envisages a league with four or five teams, with each side playing eight to 10 matches. The Super League will not replace the Premier Division because it will be played at a different time of year.

Cantwell is keen on a draft system to allocate the contracted players, but she acknowledges the Bulls issue will need to be resolved.

“The Bulls have a significant number of our top players and it will need to be a gradual approach in terms of how we spread the top players around. The Super League will be our top-end competition, but it will take a couple of years for everything to be aligned.

“We want the other teams to have programmes that are the equivalent of the Bulls. With SA Rugby funding the player contracts, there won’t be as much pooling of players at a single union because we can say where they must play,” Cantwell said.

Neil Powell was the public-facing spokesman for the Sharks for the first time on Thursday as he announced a starting line-up densely populated with Springboks for their United Rugby Championship clash with Ulster in Durban on Saturday.

Powell is the new director of rugby at Kings Park and took over team announcement duties from head coach Sean Everitt for the first time on Thursday. The former Springbok Sevens coach said that would now be the norm, and while he has the final say in selection, Everitt and the other coaches are extensively consulted.

And so the Sharks will run out on Saturday with eight Springboks, including the entire front row, two other forwards and three backs, to take on the powerful Ulster outfit. It is a mirror image of last weekend’s game against Glasgow Warriors, when there were five Springboks on the bench and they produced a spectacular finish to turn a one-point lead after 50 minutes into a 40-12 win.

“I talk a lot with Sean about selection, especially when it came to how to introduce the Springboks. They were on the bench last weekend, but now we’re bringing them into the starting line-up,” Powell said.

“It’s always great to have them and the URC is always a squad effort. We are fortunate to have the Boks for the last two weeks because they go back to the national set-up after this game.

“They’ll come back just before our game against Harlequins in the European Cup [December 10], so we had to make sure they integrated well now, because that competition will be a massive challenge.

“And it’s also given us the opportunity to rest some of the guys who have played the last four/five matches in a row. We have to make sure we manage the whole squad well,” Powell said.

While Powell said his focus is on upskilling and improving aspects of the URC team’s play, he is also concentrating on making the academy the sort of place to which rugby legends would be happy to send their son.

“My job is about building the brand and the team, and that can only happen if we have success on the field, so that’s my focus,” Powell said.

“But I’ll also look after the academy and make sure we get juniors coming through from the U20 competition to the Currie Cup and through to the URC.

“We don’t want to have to buy players from outside our system, so we need to change things up there. I’ll also be looking at the coaching structure at senior level.

“But it’s not a one-man show, it’s going to be a combined effort,” Powell said.

Sharks team: Aphelele Fassi, Werner Kok, Marnus Potgieter, Ben Tapuai, Makazole Mapimpi, Boeta Chamberlain, Jaden Hendrikse, Phepsi Buthelezi, Vincent Tshituka, Siya Kolisi, Hyron Andrews, Eben Etzebeth, Thomas du Toit, Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche. Bench – Kerron van Vuuren, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Carlu Sadie, Reniel Hugo, James Venter, Sikhumbuzo Notshe, Cameron Wright, Anthony Volmink.

All-rounder Dwaine Pretorius, whose clever bowling has been reliable for the Proteas at the death, has been ruled out of the T20 World Cup due to a fractured thumb, Cricket South Africa announced on Thursday.

Pretorius is believed to have suffered the injury when he dropped a relatively straightforward catch at midwicket in the final T20 against India earlier this week. CSA chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra has confirmed that the fracture, in his left thumb, will require surgery, and the 33-year-old has returned to South Africa for the operation.

Marco Jansen, the young all-rounder who has produced inspired performances at Test level, will replace Pretorius in the Proteas ODI squad that began a three-match series against India in Lucknow on Thursday, but the selectors are still mulling who will be the replacement in the actual World Cup squad.

The tall left-armer Jansen would add some menace and variety to the attack in Australia, but there are the death-bowling skills to consider as well, and Andile Phehlukwayo could get the nod as a more like-for-like replacement.

Both Phehlukwayo and Jansen were named as travelling reserves for the T20 World Cup.

The absence of Pretorius will rob the Proteas of another experienced campaigner, following Rassie van der Dussen’s withdrawal after breaking a finger in England.

Left-arm paceman Wayne Parnell is the other bowling all-rounder in the squad and, if there is swing about, he can be a dangerous wicket-taker, as well as usually having good skills at the death.

Lifelong Bulls fans will have seen some brilliant backlines in their lives, but not many will be more exciting than the unit coach Jake White announced on Thursday for their United Rugby Championship match against Connacht at Loftus Versfeld on Friday.

Five Springboks, four of them who are part of the national team’s current plans, have been named. New sensations Kurt-Lee Arendse (fullback) and Canan Moodie (right wing) will have a slightly more experienced international in Sbu Nkosi for company in a class back three.

Johan Goosen, who was eased back into action last weekend at fullback, returns as the starting flyhalf for the first time since injuring his knee 11 months ago, and there will be great interest in how he performs given how other experienced No.10s in the country seem to be falling by the wayside.

And then to round it all off, there is the veteran, evergreen Cornal Hendricks at outside centre. And two other backline Springboks on the bench in scrumhalf Embrose Papier and utility back Lionel Mapoe.

Even White called it “an incredible backline we’ve been able to put together”.

“But it’s their first time together as a combination and I look forward to seeing how quick it is before they click. They are all very talented.

“They all like to keep ball in hand, and in training we see so many line-breaks and so many supporting lines. So hopefully we can keep ball-in-hand on Friday evening.

“But rugby is also about clever kicking and they are all very clever rugby players. A guy like Canan can play 100 Tests for South Africa and people are now seeing what I see in him.

“And then you have a guy like David Kriel at inside centre who sums up what we’re about at the Bulls – you need to be adaptable. He brings incredible work ethic and unbelievable skills and rugby intelligence,” White said.

Although there has been a gorge between Connacht’s score and that of their opponents in their first two URC matches – Ulster beating them 36-10 and the Stormers 38-15 – White says they are a team that stays in the game.

“Connacht never go away and in both matches, with 20 minutes left the result could have gone either team’s way. So we must not think that it’s going to just happen for us.

“They beat us 34-7 last season, which was the biggest score against us. So we know we must play well otherwise we’ll get another hiding.

“They are very direct and well-coached, a typical Irish team that fights till the end. They’re good with the ball and defensively. They were not easy games for either the Stormers or Ulster.

“Connacht play a style of rugby that is very difficult to contain. Against the Stormers they were still in the game until they lost Bundee Aki to a red card, they were just one score away,” White said.

Bulls team: Kurt-Lee Arendse; Canan Moodie; Cornal Hendricks; David Kriel; Sbu Nkosi; Johan Goosen; Zak Burger; Elrigh Louw; Marco van Staden; Marcel Coetzee; Ruan Nortje; Walt Steenkamp; Francois Klopper; Johan Grobbelaar; Gerhard Steenekamp. Substitutes – Jan-Hendrik Wessels; Simphiwe Matanzima; Mornay Smith; Janko Swanepoel; Reinhardt Ludwig; Embrose Papier; Chris Smith; Lionel Mapoe.

Kickoff: 6.30pm.