Ken Borland

Joey Mongalo, the man behind the Bulls’ defensive steel in recent years, will take over as the Sharks’ Currie Cup head coach next season, the union confirmed on Monday.

Sean Everitt will continue to be the senior coach steering the Sharks’ United Rugby Championship campaign, while Springbok Sevens coach Neil Powell will oversee all the coaches in his position of Director of Rugby, and will arrive at Kings Park in time for the start of the new European campaign in September.

Mongalo, a University of Pretoria Masters graduate, will get the chance to be a head coach again having won the U19 Currie Cup with the Lions in 2016 and 2017. His work as the Bulls defence coach from June 2020 was highly rated, with the franchise dominating local rugby with back-to-back Currie Cup titles as well as making the final of this year’s URC.

Etienne Fynn, who oversaw a disappointing Sharks Currie Cup campaign this year, will work under Mongalo as a scrum/forwards coach. Former Springbok wings JP Pietersen and Lwazi Mvovo, along with former Sharks U20 head coach Mike Vowles and former utility forward Luvuyiso Lusaseni, will make up the rest of Mongalo’s coaching staff.

The URC team has been boosted by the signing of former French international and Bayonne head coach Yannick Bru, who will fulfil the role of breakdown coach. Bru won the Champions Cup twice as a player with Toulouse, whom he also served as an assistant coach for five years, before becoming the French national team’s forwards coach.

Bru’s extensive knowledge of European rugby will obviously be of great value for the Sharks as they negotiate the challenges of taking on English and French clubs for the first time next season. He will be joined by Warren Whiteley, Phiwe Nomlomo, Noel McNamara and Aksventi Giorgadze as the URC assistant coaches.

Powell’s arrival after the Sevens World Cup in September will complete the new dawn of coaching at Kings Park.

“Neil will be at the helm, to develop and oversee all rugby structures within the Sharks and to ensure that our teams are aligned in terms of the identified coaching DNA,” Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee said.

“He will implement and manage an effective plan to achieve the franchise’s objectives, which is ultimately to win trophies. He will oversee the United Rugby Championship, as well as our first foray in the Champions Cup.

“As a globally respected and admired coach, we are confident that he will get the best out of the players and bring a winning mindset to The Sharks. We look forward to him joining us before the start of the URC season in September.
“Although we made the playoffs of the URC and qualified for the Champions Cup, we want to be even more competitive. A strong foundation has been laid, and the time has come for us to build from this,” Coetzee said.

Springbok Sbu Nkosi will get the chance to re-establish himself as one of the country’s top three wings in Pretoria next season, with Bulls coach Jake White confirming on Friday that the 26-year-old is heading to Loftus Versfeld.

Nkosi has been one of the Sharks’ star players over the last few years, but with Madosh Tambwe leaving for Europe at the end of this season, the Bulls approached the World Cup winner and have now won the tug-of-war for his services.

The Barberton product was contracted at the Sharks until July 1, but he has hardly featured in their United Rugby Championship campaign due to persistent illness and recent surgery. Nkosi is in danger of losing his place in the Springbok squad due to his lack of chance to shine, especially with the rise of players like Aphelele Fassi, Tambwe and Seabelo Senatla. He was previously considered next in line to Cheslin Kolbe and Makazole Mapimpi, and he played in the 2019 World Cup semi-final against Wales when Kolbe was injured.

“Sbu Nkosi will start with us when Madosh goes to Europe,” White confirmed on Friday. “When the season at the Sharks ends, he will move back up to Gauteng and he will join us on July 1.

“He can’t come and join us before the end of the season though. The only new guy coming before July is Ruan Vermaak, whose season in Japan has ended and he will be an extra forward for us,” White said.

With the Bulls backed by such successful businessmen as Patrice Motsepe and Johann Rupert, they are probably the only South African franchise who can compete with the Sharks, who are backed by the wealthy MVM Consortium, for players.

Veteran Proteas all-rounder Jon-Jon Smuts will give the Dolphins much experience and quality next season as they push to steer clear of relegation from Division I, but KZN Cricket Union chief executive Heinrich Strydom on Wednesday criticised the structure of domestic cricket, saying it did not give enough credit to those teams that provide several players to the national teams.

The 33-year-old Smuts, who can bat in the top-order and bowls very useful left-arm spin (especially in white-ball cricket), will be joining the Dolphins from the Eastern Province Warriors, having been based in the Eastern Cape since his first-class debut in 2007.

Smuts has played six ODIs, averaging 45 with the bat, and 13 T20 Internationals, but his last appearance for South Africa was in April 2021, so his days of Proteas call-ups would appear to be over.

Losing players to the national team – nine Dolphins featured in Proteas squads last season – is what Strydom said played a key role in their disappointing 2021/22 campaign, which left them tied in second-last position with the North-West Dragons, six points ahead of the Free State Knights, in the promotion/relegation standings. The bottom team at the end of next season automatically goes down to Division II.

“With the amount of national players we have, never mind the SA A team, we needed another senior guy because we were just left with a few 26/27-year-olds,” Strydom told The Citizen on Wednesday.

“It was a weird season for us, we were the only unbeaten side in four-day cricket but we had three away matches washed out, and the consistency was not there in limited-overs cricket.

“With the new structure, we have players all over the country now, guys like Sibonelo Makhanya and Senuran Muthusamy even captaining their new teams.

“But it doesn’t make sense for a team to be relegated when they provide so many players to South Africa. We even had our coach and strength & conditioning coach with the Proteas for a while, and providing so many people to the national squad puts you at risk.

“The Central Gauteng Lions are in the same position with as many players involved with the Proteas. Imagine not having a Division I team playing at the Wanderers or Kingsmead?” Strydom said.

There is no doubt that, at full strength, both the Lions, who were in danger of being drawn into the relegation battle before their surprising triumph in the One-Day Cup at the end of the season, and the Dolphins are top-class teams that should not be relegated, especially when the side replacing them will almost certainly be of a lesser standard.

Strydom said he is hopeful discussions with the new CSA Board will see a change of heart.

“The basic agreement is done, but will common sense prevail? It’s not an authentic system of developing talent in this country when teams are not playing their own players.

“A lot of the provinces are not a representation of their specific area, and it’s not a level playing field when teams like the Lions and Dolphins provide a much higher percentage of national players.”

The absence of a single fully-contracted Black African batsman in the Titans squad for next season could limit their options when it comes to fulfilling the quota of three in every starting line-up, but CEO Jacques Faul said they had decided to beef up their bowling.

Grant Mokoena, who averaged just 26 in eight Sunfoil Series games and scored 49 runs at a strike-rate of only 89 in his three T20 appearances, has joined the Knights, while Daniel Sincuba played one four-day game, scoring 32 and 0, and has been released.

Former SA U19 Junior World Cup captain Tony de Zorzi showed glimpses of promise in a few opportunities he was given towards the end of the season, and he has been given a rookie contract, and the inside lane in terms of Black African batsmen.

Mokoena and Sincuba’s contracts have gone to a pair of fast bowlers who excelled for Northerns in their triumphant season – Eldred Hawken and Alfred Mothoa, while former SA U19 batsman Andrea Agathangelou, who has played county cricket for Lancashire and Leicestershire, has been signed from South-Western Districts.

“It’s probably not ideal, but we still have a lot of batting depth and we have decided to run with Tony de Zorzi, simply because whoever we bring in needs to be on the same sort of level as a Henry Davids or Aiden Markram, and there’s probably nobody close to that.

“We’ve beefed up the bowling and we have three quality pacemen in Lungi Ngidi, Malusi Siboto and Junior Dala, plus Alfred Mothoa is a banker and we’re excited about left-arm spinner Gregory Mahlokwana, who got injured after his first game, but we think he will play more,” Faul told The Citizen on Friday.

Nevertheless, readers of the Titans squad list will be struck by the tremendous depth at their disposal – eight current nationally-contracted players, four former Proteas and three players with bright international futures in Heinrich Klaasen, Markram and Ngidi.

Players like fast bowler Dala and leg-spinner Shaun von Berg are also certainly on the national selectors’ radar having been chosen for SA A and the CSA spin camp in India respectively.

Titans Contracted Players 2017/18: Andrea Agathangelou, Junior Dala, Henry Davids, Heinrich Klaasen, Heino Kuhn, Eldred Hawken, Aiden Markram, Albie Morkel, Alfred Mothoa, Lungi Ngidi, Rowan Richards, Malusi Siboto, Grant Thomson, David Wiese, Shaun von Berg, Jonathan Vandiar. Rookies – Tony de Zorzi, Rivaldo Moonsamy. CSA-contracted national players – Farhaan Behardien, Quinton de Kock, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Dean Elgar, Morné Morkel, Chris Morris, Tabraiz Shamsi.