Treat Kings like royalty
23 Feb 2010
The Eastern and Southern Cape has been let down by Saru and its promises, writes Keo in Business Day Sport Monthly.
The ace in the South African 2011 Super 15 pack has to be the King of Spades. Currently there are too many jokers and there is way too much bluffing from the game’s administration. It has to stop. South African rugby cannot afford a repeat of the Southern Spears, in which the Eastern and Southern Cape were promised a Super Rugby franchise in exchange for a government-backed 2011 World Cup bid.
When the bid to host the 2011 World Cup failed, so did the Southern Spears. The South African Rugby Union (Saru) spent R6 million to launch the Spears and another R6 million to close it down. Outside of the outrageous financial waste was the more telling indictment that the game’s governors were not prepared to invest in the future of this country’s rugby and were more interested in honouring a fractured past.
The Lions and Cheetahs, as individual franchises, cannot survive in an expanded Super 15 that has to find a home for the Eastern and Southern Cape. The two altitude-based franchises simply have to accept that if they are to have a future in Super Rugby it has to be as one entity called the Cats.
We’ve been there before and it was a disaster, but that is because both provincial unions always wanted independence in Super Rugby. Well, the reality is they can’t have it. Not if the game is to be advanced through more than the soft-sand promises that sunk the Spears and are sinking the Kings.
It can’t be allowed to happen again. When Saru president Regan Hoskins made such a fanfare about the Kings a year ago it coincided with Saru’s World Cup bid for the 2015 and 2019 World Cups. To be successful, the government had to endorse the bid and provide financial guarantees. Those at the Saru head table went begging and they got the financial support in return for genuine rugby investment in the Eastern and Southern Cape. Everyone applauded. Progress, finally.
The Kings made their debut on 16 June 2009 against the British & Irish Lions and the occasion was sold as the start of South African rugby’s promise of inclusivity to a region renowned as the stronghold of ethnic black rugby.
What has followed has been crass and embarrassing. The World Cup bid, for whatever reason, failed. Saru’s Hoskins and deputy president Mark Alexander were crushed as they had boldly declared South Africa could never miss out on 2015 and 2019. That’s the embarrassing bit. The crassness is the way the Kings have conveniently been shelved as Saru’s task team supposedly searches for solutions to the issue of transformation and growth in the Eastern and Southern Cape.
At the time, in the pages of Business Day Sport Monthly nearly a year ago, the caution was that it was all a sham and that an Eastern Cape-boosted Super 15, from a South African perspective, was more a Super Con in lulling the government into a World Cup guarantee. Hoskins denied it vehemently, but the lack of progress in finalising the Kings as a Super 15 franchise post the failed World Cup bid is more telling than any Hoskins or similar Saru-type denials.
The Australian Rugby Union and Australia’s recently added fifth Super Rugby team, the Melbourne Rebels, have shown up the lack of intent within Saru when it comes to the Kings.
The Rebels, who will play in next season’s competition, secured 1999 World Cup-winning coach Rod Macqueen, an influential CEO and massive sponsorship. The Australian Rugby Union have also allowed for 10 foreigners in the initial squad, to ensure the Rebels are competitive and an attraction to locals.
The same should have been done with the Kings. By now the Kings’ participation in the 2011 Super 15 should have been guaranteed and the fact that it isn’t is the most damning example of what is still wrong with the game in this country.
Government attacks on rugby always focus on black and coloured representation in the Springbok squad, when the target should be Super Rugby and Currie Cup structures. If there were enough playing opportunities across the country, colour would never be an issue at national level and we would never have to worry about non-merit selections. The best would play and the national team would always be a finishing school, and not the learning school it was on the 2009 end-of-year-tour.
It is unacceptable that 15 years into professional rugby there is not a Super Rugby franchise in the Eastern Cape. It is a bit like the endorsing of the King Protea as the national sporting symbol. It took rugby 14 years to accommodate the King Protea alongside the Springbok, and when it happened nobody blinked. The world did not end, the Springboks were not suddenly known as the Proteas and players did not refuse to wear the jersey because of the King Protea. In fact, players said they would never clutch at one over the other when singing the national anthem as both symbols had to be respected. It is the same with the evolution of South Africa’s Super Rugby geographics. The bigger picture has to be respected and not the self-serving agenda within Saru or among the respective Lions and Cheetahs franchises.
Government officials who endorsed South Africa’s World Cup bid are as culpable as those rugby administrators who have again stalled on the Kings. Why has government’s focus not been on forcing the hand of Saru? Disturbingly, it is the only way rugby’s bosses will play the King of Spades. We’ve seen too much evidence in the past 15 years to suggest otherwise. Rugby sadly always has to be forced into change. Never has any post-isolation administration been a step ahead of the transformation game.
Transformation should never be measured in black playing numbers, as has been the case for the past 15 years. On the Springbok 2009 end-of-year tour a non-white coach picked a lot of non-white players as midweek Springboks to get the politicians off his back. It was as blatant a window dress as there has been in the history of South African rugby.
Each time you think there has been progress in South African rugby, administrators fail themselves and the game they purport to serve. It can’t be tolerated anymore.
Eastern Province president Cheeky Watson wants answers from the government, from Saru and from all those who made promises that the Kings would be more than a once-off trade-off. Watson is right to demand answers. He, like anyone involved in the Kings, is being taken for a fool.
Next year is World Cup year and one in which the national team needs calm in the national administration. If the Kings don’t come to fruition it won’t happen. Government will then use World Cup participation and the Springboks to threaten rugby’s bosses. There will be the customary panic and knee-jerk reaction. The hysteria will dominate the news and outsiders will again be numbed at yet another rugby implosion.
There will be a threat of taking away passports. There will be a demand of a certain number of black players and there will be the continued bluff that the game is reflective of all South Africans. It will be awful and even more awful is that is can so easily be avoided if those running the game show grit to match their greed.
The Lions and Cheetahs, legally and commercially, can all make a winning case to justify continued independence in Super Rugby. Neither can make a rugby case based on results as they have been the duffers of the tournament, but when, oh when, will South African rugby’s elected custodians see that the decision of the Kings has nothing to do with commerce or results?
In the context of where we are as a nation and where we need to go, the Kings have to be treated like potential royalty and not like a Neverland monarchy.
Their participation in next year’s Super 15 should not even be a debate. That it is rightly questions the integrity of those running the game, and that is why change has to be forced, because doing the right thing somehow never comes instinctively to those entrusted with securing the future of rugby in this country.
– Business Day Sport Monthly is distributed FREE with Business Day newspaper on the second last Friday of each month
208 Comments
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23 Feb 2010, 14:02 pm
the only way the spears can play
is to make room for an extra team another day.
by a chinese poet called mr whocares
23 Feb 2010, 14:05 pm
@WP Till I Die: Not corrected at all. You had it spot on!
23 Feb 2010, 14:07 pm
@WP Till I Die:
How does this, one of my real favourites move you?:
” Ek het n huisie by die see
Dis nag.
Ek **** aaneen, aaneen die branders slaan
Teenaan die rots waarop my huisie staan…..”
HAVE to go now, don’t distract me .
23 Feb 2010, 14:07 pm
@vasteses:
You’re a poet and you don’t know it…
23 Feb 2010, 14:08 pm
@WP Till I Die:
Oh really
Is poetry only for white people.
23 Feb 2010, 14:11 pm
@elliott2: Golwe, not branders.
23 Feb 2010, 14:12 pm
@WP Till I Die:
Jeez I don’t know why interest in poetry, German speaking bloggers, etc etc “pleasantly surprise you”.
Not all of us are dumb clucks, you know.
Some of us even went to skool.
23 Feb 2010, 14:13 pm
@Dawn: No, not at all. I heard this one just the other day:
“Ice cream, Grenadilla lolly!
Grenadilla lolly to make you jolly!”
It was beautiful.
23 Feb 2010, 14:14 pm
@Dawn:
PMS?
23 Feb 2010, 14:15 pm
@Mongril:
As you well know there are way more than 5 (franchises) X 30 players for a total of 150 elite rugby players in SA.
You are then discriminating against the up and coming talented elite players, of whom there are +-450 players, as well as the valuable old war horses plying their trade overseas and they number about another 150.
So right there you could choose out of a pool of 600 elite South African rugby players a formidable 4-5 teams on their own.
I assure you that increased international competition will refresh our rugby.
The Six Nations and Heineken Cup matches play to full stadiums all the time.
The SANZAR tournament is now so inbred and tired, even the NZ and Australian rugby unions play to stadiums that are20-30% full.
Spectators are voting with their feet and it is starting to look bad.
23 Feb 2010, 14:16 pm
@Blouste:
I actually do know it,
saw the tahs throw it
the brumbies blow it
the stmrs shove it
and the bulls bash it
23 Feb 2010, 14:16 pm
@katman:
I’m pleasantly surprised!
It’s stunning!
Just for us fools.
23 Feb 2010, 14:17 pm
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!!!!
23 Feb 2010, 14:17 pm
@mozez22: You obviously haven’t kept yourself abreast with developments, have you?, There is an international stadium called the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, its a first class stadium, no need to argue further.
If you are really in EL, whats the problem going to PE, Limpopo and Mpumalanga okes flock to Loftus every weekend?
I say again, think before you post, lets all do our best to elevate the debate
23 Feb 2010, 14:18 pm
@Duffman: Huey, Dewey, Louis!!!
23 Feb 2010, 14:21 pm
@Dawn: Poetry is the basis of all lyricists. So no, poetry is for the masses.
23 Feb 2010, 14:22 pm
@stormer in a teacup:
Mmmf. Let them eat cake.
23 Feb 2010, 14:23 pm
@Duffman:
You speak French?
Pleasantly surprised I am.
23 Feb 2010, 14:23 pm
@elliott2:
My favourite is A.G. Visser:
Winter
Dis ****** koud.
23 Feb 2010, 14:23 pm
@Duffman: Or gooey, stewey, ratatouille!!!
23 Feb 2010, 14:24 pm
@elliott2:
My favourite is A.G. Visser:
Winter
Dis f***en koud.
23 Feb 2010, 14:24 pm
@Dawn:
These guys are so cooped up in their ivory towers, still, that they know very little of the REAL Cape around them.
Names like Dr. N Alexander, R.O.(teargas)Dudley, B.Kies, R.Rives,etc., etc. mean litle or nothing to them.
Give it to them Dawn.
23 Feb 2010, 14:24 pm
@Dawn: @elliott2: i’m sure wptid was not suggesting anyrhing racial with his question.
23 Feb 2010, 14:25 pm
@RugbyRulz:
If that’s the case I will stay with the masses.
23 Feb 2010, 14:26 pm
@Dawn:
I’m a true renaissance man, mon amie.
(Or I figured out how to use that google doohickey)
23 Feb 2010, 14:26 pm
@elliott2:
RO Dudley taught me at Stones.
My cousin is married to Russell.
23 Feb 2010, 14:28 pm
@stormer in a teacup:
Same difference. But you are absolutely correct,Disa??
See mistakes occur whenever one rushes and I have been doing that for the last hour now and I should not.
Totally away now.
23 Feb 2010, 14:29 pm
@Transformation:
Not necessarily, but equally, I hate intellectual snobs who are “pleasantly surprised” when other people quote poets.
23 Feb 2010, 14:35 pm
@TonyM:
And adding the Kings to that and we would be even less inclined to watch Super rugby as it is Foxsports local viewing of RSA vs RSA games are little to zero other than the expats.
The Rebels are here next year and with them a new chapter in Australian rugby with us gaining a domestic competition (the opening local vs local format), and funded by Super rugby too boot.
23 Feb 2010, 14:35 pm
@Dawn: A cup of tea and Cucumber sandwich or maybe just Pimms, my dear lady?
23 Feb 2010, 14:37 pm
@XhosaKid:
Listen boet.
My pinky is up in the air!
23 Feb 2010, 14:39 pm
@Dawn:
So you are not ‘pleasantly surprised’ I quoted AG Visser I take…
23 Feb 2010, 14:40 pm
@Dawn: # 177 Yes the patronizing tone. Don’t you love it! Tards the lot-ov-em.
23 Feb 2010, 15:02 pm
@PissAnt:
No, cos I know that one!
Luv it too.
23 Feb 2010, 15:05 pm
I thought this was a rugby site, not a poetry rehersal! FFS.
23 Feb 2010, 15:10 pm
@Dawn:
23 Feb 2010, 15:10 pm
@Aus_Rebel:
You would have to rub it in………..
Know that R75m of that money that you are revelling rolling around in with your local Aussie competition, comes at the expense of the 14 SA Rugby unions, courtesy SA Rugby’s Hoskins and Marinos, to the ARU.
The NZRU also received R75m.
Your Melbourne Rebels have high aspirations and will still come to SA for a few players.
When is their first game and why do you not let them play a couple of warm up games this year still against the Eastern Cape?
23 Feb 2010, 15:17 pm
Who is this “them” everyone is on about???
me, us, them……. vok, kom terug ubuntu
23 Feb 2010, 15:24 pm
@Bod:
What you on about bru.
23 Feb 2010, 15:31 pm
Archimedes, the well known truth-seeker,
Jumping out of his bath, cried “Eureka!”
He ran half a mile,
Wearing only a smile,
And became the very first streaker.
23 Feb 2010, 15:56 pm
@Dawn:
So, an intellectual snob I am.
I stand suitably rebuffed, I suppose I deserved that.
23 Feb 2010, 16:12 pm
The Lions/ Cheetahs & Stormers usually finish dead last, why would SA want another team, despite the shite on this blog the talent just isn’t there, clearly from super rugby results.
23 Feb 2010, 16:25 pm
@NZINCHINA:
Kom jy in met die deur en alles.
23 Feb 2010, 16:29 pm
@Dawn: dat is “val met de duer in huis”
23 Feb 2010, 16:29 pm
@bananaboy: sorry “deur”
23 Feb 2010, 16:43 pm
@NZINCHINA: The problem with South Africa and its teams is not talent in terms of players but rather the incompetence of its administration thereof
23 Feb 2010, 16:51 pm
@XhosaKid:
Nah mate don’t kid yourself you don’t have the players for a 5th team, like we don’t – Dawn can you translate I don’t speak Zulu.
23 Feb 2010, 16:51 pm
Sorry that should be 6th team but lets br honest 5th as well.
23 Feb 2010, 17:00 pm
You are wrong there.. a huge wealth of talent waiting to be unleashed in the eastern cape..
The sleeping giant..
23 Feb 2010, 18:50 pm
KEO, you’re spot on here. SA Rugby is an embarrassment, and it is starting to make me think Puke Watson was right… maybe the game is run by a bunch of racist dutchmen and their cronies… but even more sadly, it’s run by a bunch of incompetent fools. If they were smart, racist dutchmen, everything would be okay… I guess that’s the problem with racists though – they never are smart.
I grew up in Durban, but did humanitarian work in Mdantsane and King Williams Town for 2 years… it is the ONLY place in the country where you drive around and see black kids in rural areas playing rugby, not soccer. That alone should be the basis for a Super franchise. There are so many players there – black and white – and they all migrate to the Sharks and other rich franchises, or fall off the radar. It’s a crime! But i’m sure the Sharks and Bulls oppose it because their goes their talent pool! I’m a Sharks fan, but come on SA Rugby! Pull your heads out!
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