Ken Borland

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.

Xerox Golden Lions coach Johan Ackermann described the 36-26 defeat his team suffered at the hands of the Vodacom Blue Bulls in the Absa Currie Cup match at Loftus Versfeld as “the most boring game of rugby” he has seen for a long time.

“The first half especially was so poor, we just couldn’t get our game to flow, it was penalty after penalty. The Bulls would just bomb it back, we wouldn’t be able to control the ball so we’d scrum again. It was the most boring game of rugby I’ve seen in a while and it’s not good for the supporters either.

“It was just penalty after penalty, high ball after high ball. A disappointing match with strange decisions,” Ackermann said after the game.

The Bulls totally dominated territory in the first half as they racked up a 19-12 lead at the break. The home side then stretched that to 29-12, but the Lions dominated the final quarter and the introduction of Sevens Springbok Kwagga Smith at eighthman and fullback Andries Coetzee moving to scrumhalf saw them score two tries in five minutes to close the gap to 29-26.

But the impressive comeback was ended in the 79^th minute when the Lions were penalised at scrum time, with the Bulls front row going up, and lock Grant Hattingh scored from the rolling maul set up from the lineout.

Ackermann said the decision by referee Marius van der Westhuizen puzzled him.

“I’d like to know what we did wrong at that last scrum when the score was 29-26, is the referee saying you’re no longer allowed to dominate a scrum?

“I think the referee wasn’t certain what was happening in the scrums, all the props were guilty of not binding properly, but it was one penalty for me, one penalty for you the whole match. It was frustrating because I think we had the scrums under control but still had a few penalties against us. Normally the apology comes on the Monday, but by then it’s too late. Something urgently needs to be done about the scrums,” Ackermann pleaded.

Bulls coach Frans Ludeke, on the other hand, felt the referee had made the right decisions.

“The scrums were a huge battle and there were problems with the binding and hinging of both packs. I thought all the decisions were accurate and both packs got penalised. It depends on how you view the scrums, Johan Ackermann probably feels they had an edge at the scrums and they didn’t get the benefit of that. But I thought we were better than them in all other facets,” Ludeke said.

The Bulls coach said he felt his team were turning the corner after losing three of their first four games.

“It’s a great feeling because we worked hard and the way we reacted because we were under pressure. It brought us together and we backed each other. I felt the gain-line and collisions were better in this match than in any other game and that’s why we got reward.

“The Lions like to counter-attack from broken field, they like to move the ball around from deep, that’s their strength, but our first-time tackling was great and if you can defuse that then you get a lot of energy from that. The hunger to succeed was massive and we’ll take a lot from this,” Ludeke said.

`Ackermann acknowledged that his team did not have the energy of the Bulls.

“We just need to look at ourselves and work out why the levels of intensity  and energy weren’t there. Everything just looked slow in the first half, we didn’t react to the Bulls’ game and back ourselves to play more. There wasn’t enough ball-in-hand, not enough flow.

“We lost patience and suddenly had one-off runners against a hungry, desperate side, which doesn’t help. There was no tempo or speed to our game, they slowed down our ruck ball and the stop-start game suited the Bulls,” Ackermann said.

French rugby might not have seen the last of Argentine backline star Juan Martin Hernandez, with the 31-year-old confirming this week that he will consider returning to European rugby in 2015.

Hernandez left Racing Metro last month despite still having 11 months remaining on his contract, to head back to Argentina to concentrate on Test duty and their looming entry into SuperRugby.

But their participation in SuperRugby only starts in 2016, so Hernandez will obviously have to find a stop-gap club for 2015.

The presence of Ireland and British Lions flyhalf Jonathan Sexton and the arrival of Springbok Johan Goosen may also have prompted Hernandez’s decision.

“I’m only without a club for the Rugby Championship and the Tests in November and then we will see what happens. 2015 is a new year,” Hernandez said rather cryptically last week.

Hernandez, like so many other Argentinians, came to France to develop his game and he said his time at Racing Metro had done much for his career.

“You try to reach a very good level as a rugby player and the standard is more high in France than in Argentina. It was a big step coming to France but 90% of the players in Argentina develop their game in Europe.

“Racing Metro were a very good, strong team and when I joined them they had just gone into the first division. So I was around for the construction of the team. It was my decision to go, but I think Racing Metro will have a great season to come and maybe they will be European and Top 14 champions,” Hernandez said.

The gifted utility back has played a measly 44 Tests in 10 years and the injury curse that has so afflicted his career struck again this weekend when he withdrew from the Test against the Springboks in Pretoria with a groin injury. Some Argentinian journalists at Loftus Versfeld called Hernandez’s injury problems more mental than physical.

The smart money at the moment is on El Mago joining his former club, Stade Francais, because Hugo Bonneval, a player they relied on heavily at fullback last season, is on the injured list.