Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa’s Board can look forward to more legal action against them as dismissed Head of Sales and Sponsor Relations Clive Eksteen announced on Tuesday that he was taking them to the CCMA for unfair dismissal.

Eksteen was sacked at the weekend based on a single charge that was added to his disciplinary hearing after he was suspended on October 29 for his alleged role in the non-payment of image rights to the players’ union. That extra charge was related to a loss of $100 000 the CSA Exco alleged the organisation suffered because Eksteen negotiated a deal with Amul, the multinational sponsors of South Africa’s T20 series in India last year, for an amount less than had been approved by the CSA Exco.

While Eksteen said he was cleared of all charges related to the non-payment of image rights – the presiding officer finding that the former Proteas spinner was in fact instrumental in the South African Cricketers’ Association eventually being paid – and an additional charge involving an agreement he was not even part of between the SABC and a sponsor, he was found guilty of Charge 5 and dismissed.

Eksteen said this was despite him providing evidence that the agreement with Amul was signed by his superior, chief commercial officer Kugandrie Govender, and that she knew how much they had offered before she informed Exco.

According to CSA disciplinary processes, any appeal can only be over sanction and needs to be handled by the chief executive, who is the legal officer. But acting CEO Jacques Faul is not allowed to be involved in disciplinary matters according to his contract, so he forwarded the appeal to the CSA Board, who last weekend upheld his dismissal.

“The Chair’s finding that revenue was lost was directly contradicted by the evidence of CSA’s employees, evidence she ignored. Subsequent to my conviction, I presented evidence in mitigation. This included a variety of reputable testimonials. The Chair refused to accept pertinent testimonials into evidence. She also refused to accept that Charge 5 was a minor charge, way less serious than the SACA charges on which I had been acquitted.

“In addition, I am in possession of evidence which exculpates me, which has come to light after the conclusion of the disciplinary inquiry, which evidence was known to CSA at the time. In these circumstances, I shall immediately be referring a dispute to the CCMA regarding my unfair dismissal. All of the evidence presented at my disciplinary inquiry, as well as the additional evidence which has now come to light … will be laid out before the CCMA. My attorney and I are totally confident that I will be vindicated in due course. Unfortunately, I believe I have been made a scapegoat for the shortcomings of others and I believe further that relevant evidence has been ignored or overlooked,” Eksteen said in his statement released on Tuesday.

The CSA Board, who thus far have failed to take any action against former CEO Thabang Moroe, who is suspended on full pay after losses of millions of dollars under his watch, even had the gall last weekend to issue a statement saying Eksteen had been fired after “transgressions of a serious nature”. They failed to mention it was over a theoretical loss of only $100 000 and that it had nothing to do with the dispute with SACA, who have even come out in support of Eksteen’s handling of their image rights dispute with CSA, which involved a reported amount of R2.4 million.

The Springboks’ game against England at Twickenham on Saturday is something to look forward to, but it will be played in very different conditions to the World Cup in Japan in September.

Next year’s showpiece tournament will be played on super-fast, hard fields and the weather will be hot. In England at this time of year, the fields are very different and it’s cold, with the Springboks coming from temperatures of 30 degrees to just six or seven degrees.

There has been some consistency in coach Rassie Erasmus’s selection: There has to be 10 Tests into his tenure, that’s what you would expect. There are a few youngsters he is going to have a look at but there are also one or two surprises in his squad.

The selection of Schalk Brits as the third hooker is intriguing. He is a 37-year-old who has started just one of his 11 Tests. It’s ironic that Schalk is mentoring Malcolm Marx who has more Test caps than he has. Some people have drawn parallels to when Heyneke Meyer recalled Victor Matfield, but the lock had played 110 Tests when he was recalled in June 2014, and he had played a full season of SuperRugby.

Gio Aplon has also been recalled at the age of 36 and also from semi-retirement, playing in Japan’s top league, which is a mix of corporate workers and professional rugby players. Gio obviously has talent and good feet, but he’s going to find Test rugby a whole different pace and the intensity of the collisions will be far greater, everything will just happen much quicker.

Amongst the other players brought in, JD Schickerling is probably the next lock in, while Lood de Jager is fresh and a proven international performer. With the injuries to Lukhanyo Am and Lionel Mapoe, Ruhan Nel is also next in line for the number 13 jersey and the Springboks management called him into the squad earlier this year as well.

I am surprised none of the Du Preez brothers were chosen.

Jean-Luc is so physical and has such a big impact on the gain-line, while Daniel was selected earlier this year. Robert has now won successive Currie Cups with different teams and has proven game-management ability. The fact that Damian Willemse was not picked at flyhalf by Western Province for such a big game as the Currie Cup final tells you something about his game-management. But at least Robert gets to go to Sale now and it will be good for him to play with Faf de Klerk.

The Springboks’ contracted and Japan-based players should be fresh. They will all be ready to go, and it is a shame that the England game is outside the international window, so South Africa won’t be able to field their strongest side.

These Autumn internationals are going to sort England out after their six-match losing run earlier this year. They play the Springboks, Australia and New Zealand in the next few weeks and then we will really be able to see where they are heading into World Cup year.

The big thing for the Springboks is that they won’t have the safety net of playing on the Highveld, and John Mitchell, England’s new defence coach, knows the South African players well and would have been part of the coaching structures while he was with the Bulls. He and Jacques Nienaber would have had meetings about the blueprints for defence and the breakdown. He will intimately know the Bok defensive system.

Mitchell will implement a very high press and rush line-speed in the English defence; it’s a very high-risk system and the Bulls struggled to master it. Their defensive record was 14^th in SuperRugby, after having a full Currie Cup as well to implement the system.

It’s ironic that Mitchell ended the SuperRugby campaign saying he was looking for a specialist defence coach because of this defensive record, and now he’s the defence coach of a top-four international team.

England gave the Springboks real problems out wide in June, because the South Africans were far too tight in defence. But what cost the English at the end of the day was staying on the coast, they were in that death zone in the last 10 minutes of the first half and the last 20 of the second half in the first two Tests in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein. Duane Vermeulen was very destructive at the breakdown at the back end of both halves because England couldn’t get their cleaners to the breakdown.

England coped very well in the wet at Cape Town in terms of fielding the Springbok high-ball, box-kick strategy, using Mike Brown as the principal catcher, who has now been dropped. It shows that four months is a very short time in international rugby.

I believe the Springboks will again launch, then pass to a second runner forward, and then choose to kick left or right and put the ball behind England, which makes it very difficult for the fullback to defend. It’s a conservative strategy but it puts pressure on the opposition and the tactic had success against New Zealand in the two games this year.

The Springboks will want to play two phases and then kick behind, this is a really good tactic against a high line and a press defence because there is always space at the back because the wings are up. It will be a test though for the two young scrumhalves on tour, can they execute this strategy?

Plus there’s no Willie le Roux for this weekend, which is maybe why Aplon is there, in fact that is the most probable explanation for his selection. Rassie will want to turn England and make them exit, bringing into play the massive Springbok lineout which will have four excellent jumpers. So he needs a right and left-footed combination at flyhalf and fullback and height to compete on the England lineout.

The key for the Springboks will be the box-kick, because they maul so much, and Erasmus learnt during his time with Munster how important a kicking game from scrumhalf is, and De Klerk has done really well this year in that regard. England will be preparing for a barrage of box-kicks after the maul.

The Northern Hemisphere tour is always exciting for the players because they get to play in those places up north only once a year. They also don’t train much because there’s no way you can improve their fitness at this late stage of the year, and the preparation is just about getting the organisation and strategy right, and making sure they are mentally fresh for Saturday.

John McFarland is the assistant coach at Stade Francais, having been the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. From 2001 to 2012 he won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. McFarland enjoyed three years with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo from 2016-18.

Q: What were the reasons for your decision to join Bayonne on a two-year contract?

TvJ – It was a good opportunity for me to get a start in France and I’m looking forward to learning a lot there, especially with Yannick Bru, the former France hooker who has been coaching at Toulose, now in charge at Bayonne. We learn from each other in this game and in France there are different focus points, like the scrum and set-pieces, they are more technical there, while in South Africa we are concentrating more on playing quicker rugby. The biggest thing is that you still need the hard buggers up front to do the hard work in France, and that’s what makes their rugby so competitive. I’m definitely looking at really improving my play as a tight forward over there.

Q: Having been born in Namibia and playing most of your rugby with the Mpumalanga Pumas and the Free State Cheetahs, are you looking forward to the change of culture that you will experience in south-west France?

TvJ – Yes, my parents still farm in Namibia and it’s obviously a very different lifestyle there. But I’m looking forward to living in France, I’m going to learn the language and it’s a new culture. I love a good braai [barbecue] and my Namibia team-mate PJ van Lill tells me that they still do a lot of braaing in Bayonne! That’s how you bond, especially as tight forwards. So I’m looking forward to socialising, having a few beers with mates, and hopefully doing a bit of hunting as well.

Q: Although you were born in Namibia, your education was in South Africa. Tell us about your journey as a professional rugby player?

TvJ – After school in Pretoria, I was at the academy at the University of Pretoria for one-and-a-half years, playing for the first XV and studying sports science, but then I got into pro rugby with the Pumas. That was hard graft because they are a small union, and now I’ve had five good years at the Free State Cheetahs. They have treated me really well but now it is time to move on to my next chapter.

Q: Having impressed in South African rugby and playing for a South African Barbarians side, were you tempted to try and play for the Springboks rather than your native Namibia?

TvJ – It’s always a difficult decision whether to play for Namibia or wait for South Africa to select you, which you can never be sure is going to happen. I felt I was banging on the door for four or five years but I was never invited to any Springbok camp or anything. So in 2014 I accepted a call-up from Namibia and it was an amazing experience to play for them in the 2015 World Cup, especially to play against the All Blacks. Just to gain that experience at that level was fantastic.

Q: How are Namibia’s prospects looking going into the build-up for the Gold Cup, which is Africa’s qualifier for the 2019 World Cup in Japan?

TvJ – The boys are looking really well, there are more and more Namibian-born players in the Varsity Cup, so things are brewing there. We’re definitely able to qualify for the World Cup again, if we work hard and have our best talent available. We’re looking strong. Unfortunately I won’t be playing in the Gold Cup because I have a lot of admin to do for my move to France and I’ve also been playing one-and-a-half years of continuous, extremely tough rugby, so I need a break before I start in France in July. But I will be available for the two Namibia Tests in August.

Q: Your one-and-a-half years of continuous rugby is because the Free State Cheetahs went straight from SuperRugby into the Currie Cup and then into the Pro14; how different is the Pro14 to playing in SuperRugby?

TvJ – The Pro14 is more technical, there’s a lot more focus on your exit game. It’s more like Test rugby in terms of structure and teams don’t take so many risks, you don’t see sides running the ball out of their 22 as an exit play so often, they would much rather kick. So there’s more of a Test mindset in Pro14 and sometimes the weather plays a role in that as well. But it’s been fun, even getting stuck in the mud sometimes!

Q: That sounds like the sort of rugby made for big, heavy tight forwards but do you think being a mobile hooker who has also played flank will be an advantage for you?

TvJ – Yes, I also had offers from Scotland but I believe playing in France will be a bigger grower of my career. It will be good to play in wet weather, in France they have very big packs and heavy runners and it will be good to see if I can play against that. PJ van Lill is also a heavyweight and he’s done okay!

It is really exciting to have rugby starting again in the Southern Hemisphere this weekend and what I’m really looking forward to is having a traditional South African Saturday afternoon braai here while watching the rugby, something I won’t be getting in freezing Japan when I return there.

SuperRugby is a ‘new’ competition this year with 18 teams having been cut to 15, supposedly to ensure more closer contests and greater competitiveness. But I do have my reservations because SuperRugby must be the only competition in the world where over 50% of the competing teams make the playoffs, apart from the Currie Cup of course!

Despite eight teams making it through to the quarterfinals, there are clearly only a few places up for grabs, and you can pretty much see already the teams that aren’t going to make it – the Melbourne Rebels, Queensland Reds, Sunwolves, Jaguares and one New Zealand side.

I would say the Kiwi team to miss out will probably be the Chiefs because they are under new management and have lost some massive names – Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Liam Messam, Michael Leitch and most importantly coach Dave Rennie.

And then there will be two South African sides that miss out. I’m pessimistic about our chances because of our SuperRugby record in New Zealand over the last six years, which is nothing to brag about. We can beat New Zealand teams in South Africa, but it is a whole different kettle of fish doing it away from home – and those are the points you have to get in order to succeed in SuperRugby.

The other thing about the rule that eight out of 15 teams qualify for the knockout rounds is that it makes bonus points very necessary for teams to pick up, so it has been pleasing to see the stated attacking intent of our franchises. But because you only get a bonus point by finishing three clear tries ahead of your opponents, that means teams have to defend as well.

In terms of the South African teams, there have been many changes in coaching set-up.

The Bulls have a fresh coaching team and I know they have been working hard and it will be interesting to see how they go. Having been to training at Loftus Versfeld, they certainly look in good shape, for which you have to credit the conditioning staff and John Mitchell.

The Bulls do have certain strengths, especially at hooker and their lock pairings, and the spine of their team is quite strong – hooker, the locks, eighthman, scrumhalf, flyhalf and fullback all look good. I suppose we can be not entirely sure about scrumhalf because Ivan van Zyl and Embrose Papier have got just two SuperRugby appearances between them. How those two cope with the step up to SuperRugby will be crucial; they are both certainly talented and this is now their chance and their time. These days scrumhalf is a young man’s position because it’s all about energy and work-rate.

The Bulls have a very tough start to the competition and how they get through that will be key. They play three New Zealand teams and the Lions in their first five games and if they can come through that with a positive ledger then they will really be contenders.

The Stormers have obviously lost a lot of quality centres and the injuries around their locks is also a concern. It’s interesting to see the changing roles of their coaching staff  and how that works out.

The Stormers were certainly a real handful in Cape Town last year with their offloading game and the way they scored tries. They will now have even more danger on the wings with the players they’ve added, but the big question mark will be how they defend away from home.

They obviously have problems at flyhalf after losing their lynchpin from last year in Robert du Preez, who really made a difference in the Currie Cup final with his control and ability to dictate field position, as well as his immaculate goal-kicking.

Unfortunately the Stormers have a real draw from hell after being in relatively easy Super 18 pools, but if they get a good start then they obviously can be playoff contenders.

The Sharks have also made changes to their coaching set-up. Dick Muir has come back to Durban and they are obviously not going to die wondering in terms of attack.

They have also made some astute signings like Du Preez and Makazole Mapimpi, and with Japanese players like Philip van der Walt and Andre Esterhuizen coming back, they should certainly be a handful. It’s also going to be interesting to watch Thomas du Toit’s move to tighthead after the Sharks scrum was demolished by Western Province in the Currie Cup final.

The Sharks do have a quality, big forward pack and if they keep them all fit and start well (they have a couple of nice games at home early on), that should bear them in good stead.

The Lions have also undergone a change in coaching staff, making appointments from within the franchise and giving guys their first chance at SuperRugby level, although Swys de Bruin has been there through all their recent success. It will be interesting to see how he steps up to being head coach and how well the Lions ride the loss of the Ackermanns, father and son.

The Lions’ strength is in their centres, with Lionel Mapoe, Harold Vorster and Rohan Janse van Rensburg certainly a quality trio. How the Lions accommodate all three of them through the season will be interesting.

The key for the Lions is that the spine of their team are now all seasoned Test players – Andries Coetzee, Elton Jantjies, Ross Cronje, Warren Whiteley and Malcolm Marx – so their core is still very strong.

It’s vital that they make a good start and they have always had strong set-pieces, so it will also be interesting to see how that evolves under new forwards coach Phillip Lemmer because the Lions have always scored a lot of tries through driving mauls and lineout special plays. Will that strength still be there?

The Sunwolves will be in action next week and they will certainly be stronger this year, they have a whole host of foreign players and the rest are basically the Japan national squad working towards the next World Cup. They are also under the former Highlanders pairing of Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown, who are very experienced SuperRugby coaches.

Once again the Kiwi franchises are the ones to beat, but obviously the British Lions’ success in New Zealand in June gave a little blueprint to teams in terms of how to succeed over there. You need a strong pack of forwards, good set-pieces to put them under pressure, a rush-defence to deny their playmakers time on the ball and extremely accurate box-kicking from scrumhalf because that is the hardest kick to counter-attack from because of the chase.

John McFarland is the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. Before that, McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

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