Ken Borland

New Bulls captain Marcell Coetzee might not go so far as to consider Sean Everitt as something akin to an uncle, but the Sharks coach admitted it is going to be tough seeing his former protégé leading the opposition in their decisive Rainbow Cup match in Durban on Saturday.

Coetzee started his professional career with the Sharks, having been schooled at Port Natal High School, and it was Everitt, then in charge of youth rugby at Kings Park, who guided him through the process of being a talented player from an unfashionable rugby school, through age group rugby to being nominated for SA Rugby’s Young Player of the Year award in 2012. Three years later Coetzee made his Springbok debut and he moved to Ulster in 2016, where he established himself as a superstar.

“Marcell will always have a special place in Sharks fans’ hearts and it’s going to be quite sore to see him captain the Bulls after we brought him through from Port Natal. He was magnificent last weekend and he’s been very good for Ulster too. But our guys want to prove themselves against the best and he’s certainly been one of the best in Europe.

“Marcell is motivated every week he puts on a rugby jersey, but he probably sees a bit of a gap in the Springbok set-up with Duane Vermeulen’s injury, and I’m sure there was a lot of disappointment at being left out so I have no doubt he wants to really put his hand up against us,” Everitt said.

Bulls coach Jake White is never shy to milk any sort of psychological advantage he can get and he was not slow to point out the difficulties facing the Sharks as they look to beat the Bulls with a bonus point,  while also denying the visitors any log points, if Everitt is to take his team to Treviso next week for the Rainbow Cup final rather than to Kimberley for their Currie Cup opener.

”The Sharks are a good side, probably the one side that has consistently really pushed us and they play  a solid, certain style of rugby. They will be motivated because they have to beat us comfortably, but in trying to play a bit differently, there’s the risk that they will present us with opportunities if their efforts don’t come off.

“If you try and run everything and you’ve never trained that way, then it could lead to disaster. It’s going to be interesting to see how they adapt to that. We know we just need one point, which we get if we score four tries, so we will also be going flat out for that. It’s like 50-over cricket, you know you can bat through the overs, but you need to score runs as well,” White said.

The maudlin cries complaining that all our best talent goes overseas is something we are quite used to hearing in cricket and rugby and the issue has come to the fore again with Devon Conway’s spectacular debut for New Zealand’s impressive Black Caps cricket team and Springbok director of rugby Rassie Erasmus announcing a squad of which nearly 50% were based overseas.

Top sportspeople taking their skills elsewhere is one of the biggest challenges facing our administrators, but it is also a problem that the country faces as a whole in a wide range of fields. On the sporting side, there is not much cash-strapped Cricket South Africa nor SA Rugby can do about the major socio-economic issues that are driving emigration.

Erasmus has bemoaned the financial realities that mean it is just about impossible for SA Rugby to stop their leading players from taking lucrative contracts overseas; the Rand simply cannot compete. And appealing to professional sportspeople to consider the good of the game back home is a bit like pleading with a kid to eat their broccoli because it’s good for them.

But by choosing a Springbok squad to play the British and Irish Lions in which 22 of the 46 members are based overseas, Erasmus is in a way encouraging what he was complaining about. Local players see that squad packed with emigrants and must be thinking that heading off to Europe or Japan will be a fruitful endeavour.

And not just in terms of their wallets. This latest Springbok squad selection has almost sent a message that you are more likely to be picked if you are based overseas.

There are so many talents blossoming in South African domestic rugby at the moment – the likes of Ruan Nortje, Lizo Gqoboka, JD Schickerling and even the reinvented Cornal Hendricks – but it seems every time there was a 50/50 call, the selection went the way of the guy based overseas.

Erasmus has expressed his disappointment that there are so many of our players offshore, but favouring the exiles when it comes to selection is not going to help restrict the numbers departing.

The tacit statement behind the selection is that the standard of overseas rugby – even in Japan – is better than that of the South African domestic game, which is not a great admission for the director of rugby to make.

A 50% overseas Springbok team is also harder for the general South African public, the vast majority of whom do not have satellite TV, to relate to and support. How many rugby fans have actually seen Coenie Oosthuizen play lately? But most rugby fans will know that Gqoboka has been in rampaging form for the Bulls.

Ever since Apartheid was introduced to rip apart the fabric of our society, we have lost cricketers to overseas teams. The original outflux was to England, but lately there has been a surge of South African products playing for New Zealand.

Amazing as it might be for a country of five million people and more than 26 million sheep, New Zealand is not just the best producer of woollen products in the world, but they stand on the verge of being the best Test cricket team on the planet as well. That after falling just one run (or one boundary or one correct umpiring decision) short of winning the ODI World Cup.

So New Zealand certainly have a strong national cricket team at the moment. Which is ironic because there have been a pile of South African imports who couldn’t crack it here but have made it big on that island.

Left-arm quick Neil Wagner is the current enforcer of the bowling attack, BJ Watling is arguably the best Test wicketkeeper/batsman in the world (joining Kruger van Wyk and Glen Phillips as Saffers who have donned the gloves for the Black Caps), Colin Munro is a flashy white-ball player and no-one should need reminding of what Grant Elliott did to the Proteas in the 2015 World Cup semi-final.

Conway has now joined that list and his is an interesting tale. Having been a schoolboy prodigy, the Johannesburger went through hell just trying to establish himself as a franchise cricketer. In 21 four-day franchise games he could only average 21 and his white-ball averages are almost identical.

And then in 2017 he decided to make a fresh start halfway across the world and pow! Conway is now one of the most exciting newcomers to international cricket and his 200 against England on Test debut at Lord’s must be one of the finest performances in a first Test ever.

But blaming CSA for letting this late-blooming talent slip through their fingers is one of my pet hates. Sure, transformation priorities do lead to certain people being favoured when it comes to selection, but Conway was given every opportunity here but for some reason just could not perform well enough to become a household name.

He deserves nothing but praise though for how he has rejuvenated his career.

Each and every Proteas supporter will have their own view on how the team is performing and where it is heading, and many are not shy to share that on social media, but national coach Mark Boucher said after the T20 series loss to Pakistan that public opinion is not something he listens to.

“I would have probably hanged myself long ago if I was worried about public opinion. We will stick to our guns, the players themselves came up with the way we want to play. But I take a massive amount of responsibility for our defeats, I won’t shy away from that. If you can’t handle the pressure then you should get out of the kitchen, but I am looking forward to getting the first-choice squad back.

“I am extremely hurt by this series loss but I am not going to panic because I understand there have been trying circumstances. The injuries to Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen were big losses on top of the five players going to the IPL. But we were dealt those cards and I have to try and win with those. It’s been very frustrating to not win more series and I understand how the public feels,” Boucher said after South Africa lost the last T20 off the penultimate ball to lose the series 3-1.

While the series reflected positively on the abilities of Aiden Markram, Janneman Malan, Lizaad Williams and George Linde to step up, there is still the nagging doubt that South Africa’s fringe players have the necessary skills for the Proteas to return to being powerhouses of international cricket. Boucher said the next couple of months will be spent on up-skilling players.

“I’ll have a week or so break and then I’ll get back into it. This break is not really going to be an off-season, it’s an opportunity to up-skill ourselves and build up the fitness levels so we have the intensity and energy required to match the best in the world. There will be a lot of skill work in this short period of time and hopefully our efforts will start showing in the West Indies in June.

“My wish is that we get back to winning again and I do believe we will do that when we get our full-strength squad back. Quite a few of these players can hold their heads high, but we can see the next group of players is quite rough around the edges – they are good in patches, but in international cricket you can’t afford that, you need to be polished all round,” Boucher said.

Covid-19 has dealt South African sports fans a cruel deck of cards, never mind a hand, with the much-anticipated British and Irish Lions rugby tour now almost certainly not happening in this country this year. But there is still something to look forward to with the Rugby World Cup Sevens coming to Cape Town next year.

Megapro, who are the giants of commercial rights and sponsorship sales in South African sport, were appointed as the exclusive sponsorship sales agency by WorldRugby earlier this month and they are busy ensuring they lay on a feast of entertainment. The overriding hope, of course, is that the pandemic has eased to such an extent by September next year that sport would have returned to normal with spectators cramming into the wonderful Cape Town Stadium.

It is reassuring to know that it is a former Sevens Springbok, Steven Hunt, who is spearheading this drive as the sales manager of Megapro.

“It’s a waiting game still for the Lions tour, which is sad because it only comes around every 12 years and we could miss out on the enormous benefits it brings to the country. But the light at the end of the tunnel is the Sevens World Cup next year and there is great excitement around that. Everyone wants to see sport return to normality and the hype of a big event.

“At the moment, putting on big sporting events is weighed down with challenges, but a world cup unites the country and to lose that feel-good factor is the major loss we are currently having. But it’s good to see the professional set-ups moving again, it shows why keeping sport going is so important. The Sevens World Cup could have a very similar impact to the Lions tour,” Hunt told me in their Bryanston offices this week.

High performance sport is like a fire that needs oxygen in order to burn, it needs spectators in order to oxidise and catch alight.

“Professional sport needs spectators, both for the commercial aspects and for the players themselves. It never happened to me in my career that we ever played with no crowds, but it affects the whole life cycle of the game. And Sevens is all about the fans and the fan engagements, the festivities and fun. The whole event lives on that energy.

“Obviously the positive about this Lockdown is that the supporters can’t wait to come back to live events and hopefully they come back stronger. We’re 100% expecting the crowds for rugby to come back bigger, better and stronger. There is still massive value in playing the tournament in an empty stadium though because we will still be putting it in front of the world,” Hunt said.

South African rugby was on an absolute high when Covid struck, having just won the XVs World Cup in sensational fashion in Japan, but now they are in a fight for survival. How long this ‘state of emergency’ for SA Rugby lasts is anyone’s guess because government is ill-equipped to provide many answers or an efficient vaccination programme.

“It’s terrible that the great momentum of the 2019 World Cup has been lost. SA Rugby pushes for answers about when fans can return but there are still none – the numbers could still go up, we just don’t know. And it boils down to WorldRugby whether there will be no spectators or not at the World Cup. Fortunately we have the Cape Town Sevens this year as the last event on the circuit and we can gauge a lot from that.

“The Cape Town Sevens has set massively high standards as an event so we will stick to that formula, keep how that is structured. SA Rugby also had success with the event in George and Port Elizabeth, so the World Cup is in good hands. It’s also the first global event that we have the exclusive rights for, so it is massive for Megapro. It will be a huge success, a top-class tournament, as long as there is no more Covid,” Hunt predicted.

South African rugby may miss out on the British and Irish Lions tour, but hosting the Rugby World Cup Sevens with international spectators will be like getting a kitten for Christmas.