Ken Borland

Blistering pace and a keen nose for the tryline meant Bryan Habana was like an arrow zeroing in on its target when it came to try-scoring and the Springbok wing holds the records for the World Cup, Tri-Nations/Rugby Championship, the Springboks and for South Africans in SuperRugby. It is heartening to see the 36-year-old show the same acumen now that he has retired and is in the business world.

A graduate of the Toulouse business school, Habana is now the co-founder of Retroviral, a digital sports marketing agency with a strong emphasis on tech. It’s a career move which probably has its roots back in the early 2000s when he signed up for a BSc IT degree at the then Rand Afrikaans University. But then rugby got in the way.

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically affected everyone’s lifestyles and is likely to force structural adjustments to the economy of just about everything. Sport has been especially hard hit with the global sports industry now projected to face losses of $62 billion.

The Lockdown has also provided much food for thought for entrepreneurs and, typical of the sharp minds of Habana, Mike Sharman and Ben Karpinski, the founders of Retroviral, they have come up with a great new idea that will assist the wellbeing of sportsmen and women as they look to navigate these tumultuous times.

MatchKit.co is a mobile tech platform that allows athletes to build their own website. And not those starchy looking ones that are never updated, have lots of photos that take forever to load and are low on substance.

Within five minutes, sports stars can build themselves a website that highlights their sponsors, automatically integrates into all the big social media channels and provides detailed stats of their engagements on those platforms, has a plug-and-play, secure e-commerce store that will enable them to sell anything from branded merchandise to video or audio shoutouts, and a portal that will enable people to donate to their foundation or favourite charity.

It has often proven a stiff task for sportspeople to promote themselves better, they tend to forget certain sponsors or, in many cases, not even have an Online presence. MatchKit.co certainly appears to be able to overcome these problems.

“I’m extremely excited, MatchKit will add tangible value to athletes and allow them to easily commercialise their brands around the world. I know I was all over the place after our 2007 World Cup win, but MatchKit now allows the athlete to control their commercial rights, it empowers them, while showcasing their sponsors.

“It came about after bouncing ideas off a South African venture capitalist who’s now in the United States and it has a simple set-up. You look at sportspeople Online and not even 10-15% will have their agent’s details there. What if corporates want to engage with them? What happens if they change their agent?” Habana said at the launch this week.

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The great news to come out of the cricketing world in the last week is that the West Indies tour of England looks set to go ahead with the Caribbean squad arriving on Tuesday to quarantine ahead of a three-Test series that will start on July 8. The matches will be played behind closed doors in a bio-secure environment, with the first Test being held in Southampton, followed by two matches at Old Trafford, starting on July 16 and July 24 respectively.

That means the series will end on July 28. South Africa were scheduled to have played their first Test in the West Indies from July 23-27, with the second meant to start on July 31. With a lucrative T20 series against India lined up for the end of August, it now seems likely the Proteas will only meet the West Indians in September and there is still no clarity on whether that series will take place in the Caribbean or in South Africa, or even be moved to a neutral venue like England. The tour of the West Indies was originally meant to be of just over a month’s duration, so it doesn’t look possible to cram in the two Tests and five T20s that were meant to be played even if the Men in Maroon plant themselves in the UK and the Proteas fly over there and quarantine in the second half of July.

“You have got to understand that you have a debt to society,” the great Gary Player said when asked what message he would give to American golfers playing for millions of dollars every weekend on the U.S. PGA Tour. And then the 84-year-old nine-time Major winner and Grand Slam champion took a potshot at the lack of American golfers playing in the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City.

The U.S. PGA Tour offered more than $375 million of prizemoney for 46 official events last year, with order of merit winner Brooks Koepka taking home $9,684,006.

The Nedbank Golf Challenge, of which Player is the host, is part of the prestigious Rolex Series on the European Tour and the winner gets $2.5 million, one of the biggest prizes in world golf. But there was only one American in the field last year in David Lipsky, the world number 193 at the time, who plays mostly on the European Tour. In 2018, not a single American accepted the invitation.

“I’m in favour of the guys making as much money as they can but when you consider that I won just $45 000 for winning the PGA Championship in 1972 then it’s fair to say we worked so hard in those days so they could win big money. You’ve got to understand you have a debt to society and so many golfers do a fine job and golf is the greatest catalyst for charitable giving.

“But Sun City offered the biggest prize ever last year and there was not one American who played. They wanted 5-6 million dollars just to play. I would have rowed over from America for that kind of money! I would tell them you are not fulfilling your debt to promote the game that enabled you to live the way you do,” Player said on Thursday night in a webinar hosted by Citadel Investment Services.

South Africa’s Sportsman of the 20^th Century also said to count him amongst those players who have said this year’s Ryder Cup must be played with spectators allowed or be postponed. The biennial match between the United States and Europe is scheduled for September 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, but there have been suggestions it will have to be played without galleries, a move which has been rejected by golfers on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The Ryder Cup is a hard call. I never played in it for obvious reasons, but I can understand both sides. The sponsors put in a lot of money and the tournament wouldn’t exist without them, or the media too. Sponsors and the media are the reason why golfers nowadays play for absurd amounts of money.

“But the whole enthusiasm of the Ryder Cup is such that if there was just a deathly silence you wouldn’t want to play. So I’m with the players on this, but my heart bleeds for the sponsors and media. But the tournament can be delayed, rather do that like they’ve done with the U.S. Open and the Masters. Golfers will also have to make sacrifices and play over Christmas or whenever,” Player said.

Former Springbok captain John Smit believes rugby will need to be drastically streamlined once it resumes after the Covid-19 pandemic, while his fellow World Cup winner Joel Stransky is hoping for a quicker, less contact dominated game when action gets underway again.

Typically for the great South Africans they are, the two World Cup winners were busy handing out food parcels in Lonehill for the One Cup of Pap charitable initiative when they spoke to The Citizen about what they were hoping for once rugby is allowed to take place again.

Smit’s focus was on the effects of the suspension of play and how rugby organisations are going to have to adjust not just their schedules but also the very structure of the game in their respective countries in order to ameliorate the tough financial conditions that will be prevalent.

“Covid-19 has been a massive storm that has had a massive impact on our game, showing us how we have taken certain things for granted. I think it’s important to remember that rugby is largely a product of the players and wherever the sport is not streamlined enough, guys are going to have to make cuts.

“Decisions are going to have to be made about not just the survival of those in the game at the moment. Where the game is running fat, where most of the money is going, that’s where there have to be cuts and I think we all know where those places are,” Smit, a former CEO of the Sharks, said cryptically.

Former flyhalf Stransky wanted to see a pacier game in which there will be more exciting backline play.

“I don’t think the game will change so much although there will be more screening and testing, we will be more aware of the risks but there will still be running, scrumming and tackling. I would just like to see the space on the field used more. Rugby has become very predictable with defensive structures so well organised. The players are now very physical and tend to just bash it up.

“There is not too much backline excitement anymore; players like Cheslin Kolbe at the World Cup, stepping and beating players, using the space, are few and far between; normally the backs just kick the ball through now and hope for a mistake,” Stransky said.

The 1995 drop goal hero said he hoped being deprived of live rugby would encourage people to go back to the stadiums when the action resumes, and Stransky said he counted himself now amongst the people who used to just watch on television (when not broadcasting) but he would now be taking the family to games.

“There’s still going to be massive drama but every sport is in the same boat and we’re no different to other industries – we have all taken a knock. It could take years to bounce back but as soon as there is sport to watch live then hopefully people will be more inclined to go to the stadiums. I know I will be taking the family once rugby is back,” Stransky said.

Aiden Markram said on Monday that his first objective is to get back into the Proteas team and then he can start thinking about the possibility of captaining the national side again, a prospect that always seems to be in the conversation when the 25-year-old batsman is mentioned.

Markram has already had a taste of the Proteas captaincy, leading the team in five ODIs against India in early 2018. But South Africa were hammered 4-1 with a weakened team and it was a premature move, given that he had only played one ODI previously, against Bangladesh in East London, that stunted the progress of one of the best young batsmen in the country and he has only averaged 27.95 in the 26 50-over internationals he has played. His Test average has also dropped to 38.48 since then.

Since his pair against India in Pune in October 2019, Markram has played just one Test, due to injury, and there are even some question marks over his place in that team after Pieter Malan did reasonably well in his place against England.

“My main focus is to get back in the side and stay on the field. My main ambitions are for the Proteas to be the number one Test side and to establish myself in the white-ball Proteas team, it’s a dream to be in a World Cup winning team. I really enjoy the responsibility that comes with captaincy and I would love to do it, but I’ve never given it much thought.

“It’s more like a shot in the dark for me at the moment, although my name has been put in the hat by writers, so it’s something to consider. I would give an arm and a leg to do it, but it’s not the be-all and end-all for me, I don’t want to become desperate for it. It would be a great honour, amazing if it happens, but we have plenty of leaders in the squad,” Markram said from his Pretoria home on Monday.

The lack of international runs in the last couple of years – he has gone 39 innings for the Proteas across all formats without a century – has obviously weighed on Markram’s mind and the Titans star said the Covid-19 Lockdown had allowed him to work on the mental side of the game for when the return of cricket happens.

“It was very frustrating to miss quite a bit of the last season and the most challenging thing while being out of the game was not to let your mind run off, that’s when you tend to overthink and delve too deep into things. I tried to keep my mind calm and strong and the mental game is the difference between the Greats and the Goods in international cricket.

“It’s very difficult to keep in a positive frame of mind as a batsman because generally you fail more than you succeed and you’ve got to deal with that and keep positive. I try to feed off my past successes, that keeps my belief going, but I have certainly doubted myself, especially when you’re out of form. After a few bad knocks, people want you out of the team and the last year was quite a struggle,” Markram said.