Ken Borland

One of the positive aspects of forcing South African franchises to compete in both the United Rugby Championship and the Currie Cup at the same time has been the way it has opened up an avenue to the professional game for those late developers who would previously have been stuck in club rugby and whose talent would ultimately have gone to waste.

It has also meant Griquas and the Pumas are now way more competitive in the Currie Cup, both being strong contenders for the semi-finals.

Surely no-one would disagree that the broader and more far-reaching the South African pipeline is, the better it will ultimately be for the Springboks. When one considers the roads players like Makazole Mapimpi and Marco van Staden took to the national team, one does wonder just how much great talent is still going to waste. Are they just the absolute flukes who made it through to the big time?

Drawing players from club rugby is something the Bulls have managed quite successfully, given how they go into the final weekend of Currie Cup round-robin play on the top of the log, while also competing in a URC semi-final in Dublin on Friday night.

But, as praiseworthy as their efforts have been, that should not detract from the fact that next season, when all four URC franchises have an extra European competition to contend with, the situation is going to become even harder to manage.

Both the Bulls director of rugby, Jake White, and Sharks head coach Sean Everitt have called for SA Rugby to release the franchises from their player caps. At present, South Africa’s top four teams can only contract 50 players and cannot spend more than R60 million on contracts.

While the intention – preventing unions from stockpiling talent as they did in the past and forcing them to draw from the amateur ranks – is noble, 50 players is simply not enough if you have three concurrent competitions to look after.

While a R60 million salary cap already puts South Africa at a disadvantage in Europe because it translates to just £3-million – compared to the £4.2m Scottish clubs can spend, £5m for Wales and England, £6.6m for Ireland and £10m for France – it is the numbers game that needs attention most urgently.

When a team travels, they usually take between 26 and 28 players with them – the match-day 23 plus cover in specialist positions like hooker, prop and scrumhalf. That leaves just about enough contracted players for a Currie Cup match on the same weekend. Unless, of course, as the Sharks experienced last weekend and the Bulls are dealing with on Saturday, you also have injuries, which are pretty much inevitable during a rugby season.

Then there are also call-ups from national teams like the Springboks and the SA U20s …

Now that SA Rugby have secured five lucrative seats at the European table, the last thing one wants is for the South African teams to be mediocre. The Currie Cup is also far too historic and valuable a brand to be allowed to become not much more than a club competition.

Just increasing the number of players a union can offer some sort of contract to will give the struggling coaches some breathing space. When the cap was originally introduced, South Africa was still in Super Rugby and the Currie Cup generally only really got going once that competition was over.

So there was no need for such massive squad numbers and the development of fringe players suffered as a result.

That is no longer the case and it is time to ease this particular burden on the unions.

Proteas batsman Zubayr Hamza will be able to leap back into action less than a year after testing positive for a banned substance, as the International Cricket Council announced just a nine-month ban for the 26-year-old on Tuesday.

Having returned a positive sample for the diuretic Furosemide on January 17, Hamza accepted a provisional suspension on March 22. So he will be eligible to return to play on December 22 this year, in time for the height of the South African summer.

The ICC, in their statement released on Tuesday, said there had been “no significant fault or negligence on his part” and he had admitted the infringement, so what may be seen as a lenient punishment has also been backdated to March 22.

The South African Cricketers’ Association, which supported Hamza through the legal process, said the Western Province batsman had provided “full disclosure of medications that he had been taking, and the sequence of events leading up to the positive test. Through this process, we were able to determine how Furosemide came to be in his sample”.

Hamza expressed his relief and denied any deliberate attempt to illegally enhance his performance.

“I have never intentionally taken a prohibited substance and I am relieved that the ICC determination confirms this fact. The past few months have been difficult for me on a personal and professional level, and I have learnt lessons that I will share with my fellow players,” Hamza said.

Last year the World Anti-Doping Agency also announced that Furosemide was one of the substances that should no longer be considered a banned substance if its concentration in the urine was less than 20ng/ml.

Hamza, who first played for the Proteas in 2019, went through a couple of years of poor form after he was dropped from the Test side during the series against England in early 2020.

But he gave his career a fresh dose of oxygen last summer and not only returned to Test cricket in New Zealand, but made his ODI debut for South Africa as well, scoring 56 against the Netherlands at Centurion.

Then came the positive doping test, a deflating incident which fortunately will not cost the talented strokeplayer more time out of the game.

Notwithstanding the tragedy of 101 000 deaths and the annoying recent upsurge in positive Covid cases, SA Rugby president Mark Alexander says a return to allowing full stadiums for the Springboks’ matches is a life-or-death matter for the sport now.

At present, outdoor sports stadiums are only allowed to host 50% of their capacity and Alexander said this was not just denying SA Rugby much-needed revenue, but also stopping the spin-off benefits from reaching the broader economy.

“When I went to the Waterfront in December, there were over 100 000 people and I didn’t have to show my vaccination card, there was no social-distancing there,” Alexander said. “But when it comes to sport, we have all these undue regulations, which puts massive pressure on rugby.

“Having no Tests in 2020 had a major effect on our revenue and 2021 helped to bridge the gap a bit. But we’re hoping we can have 100% capacity for the Springboks this year or else we will not be able to deliver our budget.

“We need to be self-sustainable because we know we can’t expect government to fund sport, we understand that, but just give us the vehicle to raise funds and deliver our mandate.

“And there’s a knock-on effect for people like the informal traders around the stadiums. Not having full capacity has an economic impact for the country as a whole. We estimate that the Springboks’ six home Tests this year, against Wales, New Zealand and Argentina; the Carling Champions Match against Italy A; the Sevens World Cup and the Sevens Series event in Cape Town, will generate R18.6 billion rand for the economy,” Alexander said.

Alexander, who was recently re-elected for a second and, he says, final four-year term as president, said it was most pleasing to see how successful the introduction of South African franchises into European competition had been.

“We had to play in the United Rugby Championship in order to qualify for the European cup. That’s going to be better quality rugby, we’ll be up against six other countries and not just four, so that will raise the bar.

“We want our players in better competitions, against the best teams in the world. And most of our teams are playing in two different competitions already, so the depth is there, we have enough players.

“We just have to manage our players better and be smarter. And we’re seeing more international-based players coming home as the overseas clubs cut down on their squads.

“The bulk of rugby funding these days is in the UK and France. So we need to collaborate with those markets, be a part of bigger plans. We need to sell our properties in Pounds, not Rands,” Alexander said.

Keegan Petersen revealed himself as one of South Africa’s brightest batting talents in the series against India, but the man who made the No.3 position his own has now suffered the disappointment of being ruled out of the tour to New Zealand due to a positive Covid test. This does, however, potentially open the way for an exciting young batsman like Ryan Rickelton to make his long-awaited debut.

Petersen, who is asymptomatic, has been replaced in the squad by Western Province talent Zubayr Hamza.

But Petersen’s misfortune, announced on the morning of the team’s departure for New Zealand, could well be just the break the 25-year-old Rickelton has been waiting for. The Central Gauteng Lions batsman has been part of the Proteas squad since the tour to Pakistan a year ago, but is yet to catch a game.

Rickelton has been in exceptional form in the domestic four-day competition this season, and scores of 90 and a match-saving 102 not out for the Lions against Western Province at Newlands last weekend took his tally this summer to 473 runs in five innings, at an average of 118.25, with three centuries.

But as much as one would like to see a new talent on the international stage, you have to wonder if the Proteas selectors won’t use Petersen’s absence as a lifeline for Aiden Markram.

Markram has scored just 140 runs in his last nine innings, with one half-century, and there was a strong possibility he was going to lose his opening spot in New Zealand to the uncapped Sarel Erwee, who is averaging 86 in four-day cricket this season.

But both Markram and Erwee could conceivably fill Petersen’s No.3 spot. Rickelton is also a top-order batsman, comfortable in the top three, but choosing two uncapped batsmen in Erwee and Rickelton could be too much of a risk for the selectors, so it will be interesting to see which option they choose.