Ken Borland

The fact that the Springboks will be missing the defence of their Rugby Championship title – and any international rugby at all this year – is obviously terrible but it is a courageous and correct decision by SA Rugby.

The fact that, for once, the players were not thrown under the bus, sacrificed on the altar of financial gain, speaks volumes for the integrity and willingness to do the right thing for the game of the people who made that extremely tough decision.

Yes, not playing in the Rugby Championship is going to mean South African rugby, already bleeding due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is going to lose out on millions of rand. Fortunately some of the financial blow will be mitigated by some clever work in negotiation that has a clause written into the Sanzaar contract that if a country is unable to play due to circumstances beyond their control, then they still get a share of the revenue.

It is precisely that sort of integrity and willingness to act for the greater good of the game that is entirely missing from the Cricket South Africa Board.

What can we say about a person’s integrity and service to cricket when the forensic report they personally played a role in instituting implicates them in wrongdoing; and when both Sascoc, the controlling body for all high-performance sport in this country, and the Minister of Sport call for them to stand aside to allow for a proper investigation; but they stubbornly refuse to go, even at the risk of the ICC suspending the Proteas from international action?

As someone who has covered top-level cricket and rugby in this country for more than 25 years, I cannot escape the irony of where SA Rugby stands at the moment in terms of public credibility in comparison to Cricket South Africa.

CSA used to be leading the way in terms of transformation and good governance, and the Proteas, despite their miserable World Cup record, were consistently amongst the top three in global cricket. Rugby, slow to transform and with the tail (all the minor provinces) wagging the dog in terms of decision-making, delivered World Cups in 1995 and 2007, but there were many dark times on and off the field in between and after.

One of rugby’s lowest moments came when they tried to take on government, even forcing Nelson Mandela to testify in court. They took a long time to recover from that disgrace.

But with Rassie Erasmus and Jurie Roux leading the way, a third World Cup title was won last year with a marvellously transformed team that was loved by the public at large.

Rugby has learnt the lesson that you should never pick a fight with the sports minister: you might win a battle, but you will definitely ultimately lose the war. The arrogant CSA Board, judging by the awful letter acting president Beresford Williams sent to sports minister Nathi Mthethwa, clearly still need to learn this lesson.

The ICC may be the global governing body of the sport, but they are generally reluctant to get involved in the affairs of their individual members. In fact, they will only step in if a member complains to the ICC itself, which is why there have been numerous thoroughly dysfunctional administrations about which nothing has been done.

Haroon Lorgat, the former chief executive of both the ICC and CSA, has also drawn the important distinction between government interference and intervention. By forewarning CSA and the ICC – he gave them a very generous two weeks grace – Mthethwa has signalled that his stepping in is an intervention rather than interference. There are very few people other than the CSA Board who will not consider it a welcome intervention, so long and revolting this imbroglio has become.

Mthethwa issued his statement, which is one of the most dramatic in South African cricket history, on Wednesday. By Friday afternoon we were still waiting for any response from CSA to what amounts to a massive motion of no confidence in the organisation.

Perhaps they don’t know what to do, given the rank incompetence of so many of their directors. Well here’s a suggestion for the obstinate CSA Board: Do the right thing.

In my mind that involves anyone implicated in the Fundudzi Forensic Report immediately standing down, so Sascoc can do a thorough investigation of CSA’s affairs without these self-serving, power-hungry administrators  continually being in the picture.

That’s the sort of compromise that might just get Mthethwa off cricket’s back and stop him from doing something that could really lead to catastrophe for the sport.

For the sake of cricket, the game you have all professed to love so much, please just stand aside.

WorldRugby may have this week opened a window for the Rugby Championship to take place in New Zealand between November 7 and December 12, but the situation is still far from ideal for South African participation. But commercial imperatives dictate that the Springboks simply have to find a way to get over there and play, otherwise SA Rugby will suffer devastating financial losses.

It is the Sanzaar competitions that bring in the bulk of South African rugby’s revenues and with SuperRugby having been scrapped after just half-a-dozen rounds, it is the Rugby Championship that needs to save the broadcast deals through providing some live content.

As SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux said recently, the Rugby Championship is a very expensive competition to run, but the broadcast revenues are significant enough that the commercial value compels Sanzaar to continue the event. The difference between revenues and expenses is the reason SA Rugby can use the Rugby Championship to cross-subsidise several other competitions.

One of those competitions is the Currie Cup, which used to be an event of industrial proportions in South African rugby, the envy of the world. Sadly SA Rugby has over the years allowed the jewel in their crown, their most valuable property after the Springboks, to fade into relative insignificance.

But the imminent demise of SuperRugby is likely to bring a resurgence in domestic competition and a Currie Cup style tournament this year is going to play a crucial role in the Springboks returning to action; hopefully that local action will continue to be a focus in 2021 and beyond.

Even though playing in Europe seems to be the big prize at the moment, and private equity investors in our franchises are already saying this is essential for them to get a return on their money, hopefully SA Rugby will still put energy and resources into having a strong purely local competition.

In the meantime, the top eight teams in South Africa are going to play a tournament later this year to at least get rugby back on the go locally. Apart from providing some content for SuperSport, who pour millions into the game, those eight teams are also going to play a vital role in getting the Springboks ready for action.

With New Zealand and Australia already back playing rugby for half-a-dozen weeks and South African players realistically only returning to action in mid-September, there have been understandable concerns expressed that the Springboks are going to be on a hiding to nothing if the Rugby Championship is played this year, being so far behind in terms of preparation. There have been angry mutters about their World Cup win being tarnished.

But the reality of the situation is that even if the Springboks are going to disappoint in terms of on-field results, they simply have to return to action and our television screens, it is a financial imperative. And they have played for financial reasons before, most recently when they lost to Wales in Washington in June 2018.

New Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber has said a squad of 45 players are going to have to travel to New Zealand and quarantine before entering their bio-bubble, and there have even been complaints from local coaches that that will decimate their provincial squads. As is often the case in South African rugby, the unions are going to need a reminder that they are there to serve the national cause, any local competition this year is mostly about getting the Springboks ready for action.

Sanzaar CEO Andy Marinos certainly knows the value of the Springbok brand and last weekend he was stressing the importance of them returning to international action before the end of the year. And as we saw at last year’s World Cup, in which they were certainly underdogs, the ability to rise above the obstacles in their path is a great property of the Springboks.

“By no means will the playing field be level, but the Springbok side have a deep, steely resolve, and I know Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber will optimise whatever time they have to be as competitive as possible,” Marinos said.

Nienaber says the players in the Springbok squad need at least six games beforehand in order to be able to play in the Rugby Championship. They are unlikely to get much more than six matches unless rugby somehow resumes later this month, but at least they will be going to New Zealand feeling fresh.

And there is a large gap between the Rugby Championship kicking off and the end of SuperRugby Aotearoa and SuperRugby Australia. The New Zealand competition ends on August 16, with no final, while the Australian final will be held on September 19. Whoever handles the double-edged sword of rust versus fatigue best will have a large advantage, and I wouldn’t write off the Springboks just yet.

There seems to have been some misinterpretation of Jurie Roux’s comments this week to the extent that the Australian Associated Press news agency claimed that the SA Rugby CEO had made the call for legal action to be taken against New Zealand Rugby for their plans to basically pull out of SuperRugby as we know it.

The truth is likely to turn out to be almost the opposite. While Roux did say “New Zealand have kicked themselves out”, he also added that they had “every right to determine their own future” and that discussions were happening with all Sanzaar partners.

You see, the Covid-19 pandemic would almost certainly qualify as a ‘force majeure’, the trendy new legal term borrowed from the French for what we used to call Acts of God. A ‘force majeure’ is an unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstance that makes it impossible to fulfil a contract.

In terms of rugby, it is clearly impossible for SuperRugby in its usual format to happen in 2021 if international travel is not yet allowed, if there are strenuous quarantine measures still in place or if the paucity of flights makes overseas trips prohibitively expensive.

Roux did say that there are Sanzaar legal agreements in place and that if anyone ignored their commitments to them then they would be liable to legal action, but with that French word coming into play, it would clearly take some pretty soulless leadership to try and sue a union that is just trying to keep themselves afloat in this time of economic catastrophe.

The shoe is on the same foot when it comes to South Africa because even if New Zealand wanted to proceed with SuperRugby as per normal next year, our franchises probably wouldn’t be allowed into the country without quarantining for two weeks and the costs of travel would be unaffordable.

Roux is a shrewd man as well and, although he has never publicly dissed the brand, he would have been well aware that the current SuperRugby format had lost the support of the general rugby-loving public and was busy pushing SA Rugby into poverty. He admitted this week that for more than a year he has been looking at additional options for SA Rugby and said “we are a long way down that road already and some of those options probably suit us better”.
This surely means a move into the lucrative Northern Hemisphere market. The Springboks and our top four franchises have plenty to offer European competitions as well – it is not as if we are the peasants of the game, we are the world champions and one of the biggest broadcast markets for rugby in the world.

But while SuperRugby may well be discarded like the old, worn out pair of boots it is, there is no doubt South Africa want to maintain a good relationship with New Zealand, traditionally their greatest rivals. Roux spoke about how the Rugby Championship is not only a significant revenue-earner for SA Rugby but it also enables them to cross-subsidise so many of their other competitions.

Those Sanzaar legal agreements are going to force New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, and Argentina, to the negotiating table to thrash out whatever win-win-win solution they can come up with. Leverage is always the name of the game when it comes to negotiation and while South Africa have the numbers and therefore the money to bring to the table in a big duffel bag, and New Zealand also have a large bag based on their historical record as having the best teams in southern hemisphere competition and therefore the biggest drawcard, it would seem Australia and Argentina only have sachets to barter with.

Nobody would want Australian rugby to be isolated like their country was before James Cook arrived with his cutlass, but the fact is they are not in a position of strength when it comes to negotiating the future of Sanzaar.

It is not too surprising that New Zealand do not want to accommodate all five Australian franchises, but if allegations that they have been in clandestine contact with a couple of them are true then that would be as offsides as the former SA Rugby president who fired the Springbok coach by fax.

Whatever comes of the negotiations, though, it would seem South African rugby fans can look forward to a stronger Currie Cup-type tournament locally, a refreshed, shorter, crossover event with the other Sanzaar teams and more of our franchises dunking their toes into European competition.

With the British and Irish Lions touring here next year, the stars of the UK game could become the same sort of attractions/nemeses as the likes of Dan Carter, Christian Cullen, Richie McCaw and Stephen Larkham.

And given the time zone, watching our teams playing in Europe will be much easier for those of us who tend to suffer from moderate dysania.

Ever since leading the most transformed Springbok side yet to World Cup glory, Siya Kolisi has gone beyond being merely a sports star and has become a powerful symbol of change and unity in South Africa, so it was no surprise to hear SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux say the national captain has every right to express his opinion.

Roux was responding to questions over how SA Rugby would respond to Kolisi’s social media post this week in which he supported the Black Lives Matter movement and spoke of his difficulties in fitting in with the Springboks and their culture. He said his culture was not represented in the team and he felt he had to conform in order to be accepted. Kolisi added that “the next generation can’t suffer like we did”.

Kolisi also pointed out that World Cup-winning coach Rassie Erasmus had addressed the issues and transformed the Springbok team both in terms of personnel and environment.

“Siya is his own person and he got to where he did by himself and led us to the World Cup, so it’s not for me or anyone else to tell him what he must say. We must give people the opportunity to tell their stories, and people will either support or not support what they say, but that is always the case. Personally, I respect his comments.

“Black Lives Matter is basically about respect for others and how we treat people on a daily basis. That should be first and foremost, whether we are talking about BLM, Farm Attacks or Gender-Based Violence. We’ve seen that rugby can have an influence in society and we need to own up to those issues and not steer away from those conversations,” Roux said this week.

Roux made the call for more discussions over improving opportunities for Black people in the sport.

“Let Black people tell their stories and what’s more important is for us to listen and hear what they are saying. We must not shy away from awkward truths. We must continue dialogue and figure out together how to bring change. Is our transformation plan robust enough? These are very serious matters that transcend way beyond sport.

“Maybe some elements of our plan do need change, for example when it comes to Black coaches. Rassie has presented a plan to fast-track Black coaches and we need to look at that more seriously. I’m the first to acknowledge that things have gone wrong, even if we have made some very good progress in transformation. As a federation, rugby has been very good at acknowledging our sins of the past,” Roux said.