Ken Borland

Currie Cup rugby players, franchise cricketers and Premiership footballers will dominate the sporting headlines this weekend, but some of them will take time to think back and remember the largely anonymous people operating at amateur level who made such a big difference to their careers.

Similarly, I will remember this last week for the two reminders it gave me of the many people toiling out of love for the game rather than money. In the sports journalists’ industry, we tend to focus on the small elite triangle at the top of the pyramid, while the thousands of amateur and social players and administrators that are the base – the very foundation – are largely ignored.

Take David Bagg, Gordon Brews and Mike Klatz.

At great personal expense and effort, they have restored Huddle Park, the famous Johannesburg municipal golf course, to its former glory; how successful they have been is borne out by the Sunshine Tour hosting their annual – and hugely popular – Media Challenge there this week.

In the last two years they have taken a derelict, overgrown property that had been abandoned by the City of Johannesburg and turned it into a friendly, first-class facility. They had to remove numerous squatters to do so, but they have employed over 80 people and are providing training in greenskeeping and hospitality, as well as once again providing a cheap pay-and-play option (R190pm membership, as little as R90 for a midweek round) for the public who want to get into golf but cannot afford the exorbitant membership fees of the established clubs.

Apart from restoring one of the most popular courses in Johannesburg – between 150 000 and 200 000 rounds of golf were played at Huddle Park annually in the 1970s – to its rightful place, the trio have also developed a mashie course, a floodlit driving range, a coaching academy, restaurant and sports bar, function venues, walking trails and even a trout-fishing dam as tie-ins.

Future plans include a mountain bike trail, cycle track, zip-lining facility, eco park, gym, beer and food festivals and arts and crafts expos as the Public Private Partnership provides a fun space for the community.

Many Johannesburg golfers learnt the game on the spacious fairways of Huddle Park and it is great news that the 75-year-old parkland green lung will continue for many more years.

Bad news I received this week was the passing on of Dave Edmondson, a legendary figure in KwaZulu-Natal sport who played an important part in setting me on my path to sports journalism as a career.

In 1992, when I was on the University of Natal Pietermaritzburg sports executive, I approached Dave, who was the head of sport, to find out what careers were available in sport (sadly, actually making it on the field wasn’t going to be an option!).

He suggested writing about sport and he approached another legend, John Bishop, at The Natal Witness and six months later my career was launched.

The University of Natal sports department did not have nearly as many resources as the likes of Tuks, Maties or UCT, but Dave gathered together some tremendous sportsmen and women during his time – Jonty Rhodes, Mark Andrews and Greg Nicol being amongst the most famous of them.

During his own playing days, Dave represented Natal and South African Universities as a hockey goalkeeper, played Natal U19 rugby and was a premier league cricketer. He went on to become a Natal cricket selector, the president of the Maritzburg Cricket Association and an honorary life president of KZN cricket.

But the mark of the man was the time he was willing to spend – for little material reward – enhancing the careers of others. A nicer man you couldn’t hope to meet and the encouragement and assistance he gave many future stars as a coach, schoolmaster and administrator is the point of sport, even if his name was not at the top of the triangle.

The Springboks versus All Blacks rugby Test at Ellis Park last weekend counted as one of the greatest sports events I have been to and I felt immensely proud not just because our national rugby team won, but also because of the way they played and the way they carried themselves after the long-awaited triumph over their greatest rivals.

Even if one is not impressed by the way New Zealand and South Africa are steering rugby in a bright new direction of high-tempo play, the wonderful spirit shown between the two teams and the obviously high respect they hold each other in, must gladden the heart of all who love sport for the character-building effects it can have.

The wonderful gesture made by the All Blacks in Wellington when Richie McCaw handed over gifts to Bryan Habana and Jean de Villiers for playing their 100^th Tests will live long in the memory. The fact that nothing of that sort happened in Australia probably says more about the special relationship between the Springboks and All Blacks rather than any deficiencies on the Wallabies’ part.

But if the Springboks are going to win over even more hearts and minds – it is clear that still not everyone in South Africa believes they represent them – then perhaps they should take a leaf out of the book of their cricket counterparts who launched their ProteaFire campaign this week to some fanfare.

A huge part of the Proteas’ success in recent years has been due to the calibre of people in the team – the likes of Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, JP Duminy, Dale Steyn, Ryan McLaren, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander are all fantastic human beings – and the Springboks also have some fantastic leaders of men in their ranks, Jean de Villiers, Victor Matfield, Tendai Mtawarira, Adriaan Strauss, Duane Vermeulen, Francois Louw, Bryan Habana and JP Pietersen springing readily to mind.

Rugby will be facing their own World Cup challenge next year, but they will also be tested off the field with sponsors cutting back and transformation issues still bedevilling them.

Whether ProteaFire will help the cricketers finally win their World Cup remains to be seen but what is certain is that most of the population will be firmly behind them.

ProteaFire emphasises the importance of putting the team ahead of the individual and the concept of Ubuntu is a key part of Graeme Smith’s vision that started in 2007. Cricket is often, because of its tradition of statistics, a very individual game and one would have thought rugby, perhaps the greatest of team sports, would have been quicker to implement this sort of mission statement of what playing for the national side really means.

For the cricketers, their diversity will be their strength and rugby probably isn’t quite there yet.

Another important aspect of ProteaFire is that it is almost a contract the national team have signed with their supporters in terms of what is expected of them, on and off the field. As Hashim Amla pointed out, this does not mean treating players like babies.

“On the field, emotions can run high and nobody’s perfect. It’s not about having 15 saints, everybody’s different and it’s about getting the strengths of all 15 players together and dealing with any fallouts,” Amla said.

One cannot help but come to the conclusion that the current turmoil wreaking havoc in English cricket is born out of their failure to deal properly with issues of team culture and identity.

Kevin Pietersen can be a brat, but there have been difficult cricketers before who have been allowed to enjoy the middle of the spotlight while still contributing to the team success.

Last Saturday night at Ellis Park and Thursday night in the SuperSport studios were two proud evenings because it showed South African sports teams are getting it right.

Former Bordeaux-Begles president Kevin Venkiah has been in Mauritius for 10 years and has been able to watch rugby on the small Indian Ocean island steadily grow, such that there are now 1,200 registered players.

Venkiah has been the Rugby Union of Mauritius (RUM) president since March 2013 and he is at the helm during exciting times. As with many former African colonies, rugby in Mauritius was dogged by perceptions that it was white and elitist.

“People think that only white people play rugby,” Venkiah says. “When I arrived in Mauritius, 95 per cent of the team was white but we are trying to change the minds of the local communities and make rugby multi-cultural. Our teams now have this. They are mixed, probably 60/40 but we want to get it to 50/50.”

With Venkiah’s excellent French connections – he is very close to the Castres Olympique club – he is able to use visiting players from that great European league to inspire more Mauritian youngsters to take up rugby.

“We have players from clubs like Toulouse, internationals like Pieter de Villiers and Thierry Dusautoir, coming to Mauritius and they spend half-a-day at a coaching clinic. When the youngsters see these stars, they want to play like them. Rugby is not as important as soccer on Mauritius, but it will be in the future,” Venkiah says.

Now ranked in top eight within Africa

What has caught the eye about Mauritian rugby recently has been the promotion of their national side from Africa Cup Division 1C to 1B with victory in their tournament in Botswana in June, meaning they are now ranked in the top eight in Africa and will be playing alongside teams like the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Madagascar.

They beat Zambia 54-17 and overwhelmed Swaziland 134-0, one of the top five highest scores ever recorded in a rugby international, following a creditable 61-17 defeat at the hands of semi-pro South African club champions Rustenburg Impala, who only led 21-10 at half-time.

Both Mauritius and Botswana finished on 10 points in the tournament but the hosts had been beaten 54-9 by Rustenburg and could only beat Swaziland 87-0 and Zambia 66-14, therefore giving Mauritius the title and promotion on points difference. 

“Next year we will be in Africa Cup 1B and we would like to stay there for one or two years because that is our time to grow up. Everybody wants to play in the Rugby World Cup and, if we ever qualified, we would be the first Mauritian team sport to participate in a world championship. We have a very young national team at the moment, averaging about 23 or 24 years old. So in five years’ time they will be ready for the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan. We will play for that.” 

In order to improve the national team, RUM has encouraged its top young players to follow the many other youngsters going abroad to study and then come home and share their knowledge and experience.

Learn overseas, come back with experience

“We want people to go abroad to play, we push them to go and grow with foreign teams and then come back with experience,” Venkiah says.

RUM has just registered to take part in the IRB’s hugely successful mass-participation programme, ‘Get Into Rugby’ and is on the verge of launching its three-year strategic plan to grow the game in the various communities around the country. It is also looking to jazz up a rather monotonous schedule that has seen Mauritius only travelling for the Africa Cup. Venkiah wants them to take on several foreign clubs as well as the likes of Singapore and Mozambique.

But speaking to this insurance and investment manager is not just a monologue about the Mauritius national team. Venkiah is passionate about growing the grassroots structures that will make the current success sustainable. It’s been a formidable challenge getting into Mauritian schools but progress is being made.

“It’s very hard to get rugby into the schools but little by little we are getting there. We started with the public schools and we give them training for eight weeks and then they have a little tournament. Recently there was a tournament with 150 kids playing and 25 of those have gone straight into clubs,” Venkiah reveals.

Rugby was not introduced to Mauritius by the French but rather by the English, through their army in the early 1900s. In 1928, the game was taken up by Franco-Mauritians and for nearly 50 years there were seven major clubs on the island of little more than 2,000 square kilometres.

The Dodos survived!

But the roots were shallow and, after independence in 1968, the clubs began closing because they had no junior players. Ironically, it was the Dodos club who were left as the sole survivors.

But in the 1990s, youngsters who had been to study in South Africa, England, France and Australia began to bring rugby back to the island and television coverage of the memorable Rugby World Cup 1995, hosted and won by South Africa, also helped create a market for the game.

“One day, we will have six or seven big clubs again and that would make for a very good championship. But at the moment we have four first division clubs and six in the second division, as well as three women’s clubs,” Venkiah says.

“We have also set up four coaching centres and we are playing rugby in the north, on the east coast and in the centre of Mauritius.”

CAR and IRB are supporting Mauritius

The prices of sporting infrastructure means this has not been an easy task for RUM and Venkiah is grateful for the assistance they have received.

“We are a very poor federation in Mauritius but we have made a lot of progress and it’s great to get recognition for that. The International Rugby Board has given us a lot of help, including getting us into full membership,” Venkiah says.

“The Confederation of African Rugby (CAR) has also been very supportive. We have made a lot of progress and it has recognised that. Maybe even one day it can have its congress in Mauritius!” 

And with its combination of tropical beaches, friendly people and engaging rugby, there are many worse places to hold such a prestigious gathering.
 http://www.irb.com/newsmedia/regional/newsid=2073178.html

Jake White is on his way from Sharks rugby after just one year and the smart money is on the 2007 World Cup winner re-emerging in a consultancy position with some team playing in next year’s edition of the global showpiece.

White has always stated his prime goal is to return to coaching an international team, something Sharks CEO John Smit acknowledged yesterday in announcing the move, but the departure is not on as amicable terms as the statement suggested.

The director of rugby’s tenure has been on rocky ground since the Sharks board took exception to the unpopular style of play used in SuperRugby, with an over-reliance on kicking and territory, and the former schoolteacher has also reportedly had bust-ups with junior players at the union.

“Jake and I have known each other a long time and were very frank in our discussions regarding this Sharks opportunity back in 2013, Jake was excited to implement change as well as be involved with South Africa’s most talented squad, but from the outset stated his ambition to be on the international stage again and I was all too happy to have him for however long we could. What he has achieved for us in such a short time is incredible and our staff and players have learned a huge amount,” Smit said in the statement.

The captain of White’s 2007 World Cup-winning Springbok team praised White for the culture he had installed at the Sharks and his work in developing structures for both the leading players and those coming through the system.

“Jake was also tasked to up-skill the young coaches as well as tidy up all rugby structures across the board from our academy all the way to our senior team. Initially it was thought this would take some time. However, being allowed to concentrate on these tasks during the Absa Currie Cup has fast-tracked the process and we can happily say our SuperRugby squad is in place and our pre-season plan ready to go.

“The mentoring role Jake has played to our coaches has been invaluable and the time is right for Jake to free himself up for any international coaching and consulting opportunities. The 2015 Rugby World Cup is just months away,” Smit said.

White has a very good relationship with Japan coach Eddie Jones, the former Wallabies mentor who he brought in as a consultant to South Africa’s triumphant 2007 campaign. Jones recently suffered a stroke, plus Japan are in the same pool as South Africa, of whom White obviously has intimate knowledge. The Japan Rugby Union are also well off financially, so paying for a consultant of White’s pedigree would not be a problem.

White has confirmed that he will be moving back to Cape Town, prompting speculation that he might be lining up a role with the Stormers. But this would be highly unlikely, given that current coach Allister Coetzee has steered his team to the top of the Currie Cup log and they already have a high-profile director of rugby in Gert Smal, who was White’s assistant with the Springboks.

Plus the brand of rugby White introduced at the Sharks will not go down well with the Newlands faithful.

The doors at King’s Park could well be opening for someone like Gary Gold, who was the Springbok forwards coach from 2008-2011, during the Peter de Villiers era, and someone who worked well with Smit.

However, if the decision is not left entirely to the CEO and the Sharks board want to be actively involved in recruiting White’s successor, then former All Black and Gauteng Lions coach John Mitchell is already in KwaZulu-Natal as the head of University of KZN rugby.