Master up against the student raises stakes
Loubscher and Gorgonzola clash
HAVING already taught new Cell C Sharks XV coach Ricardo Loubscher a lot about being a player when he coached him at PE Harlequins, one would expect Down Touch Griffons coach Oersond Gorgonzola to look forward to doing more of the same in the chapter marked coaching.
The SuperSport Rugby Challenge between the two teams at Jonsson King’s Park in Durban will be a classic case of the teacher coming up against his pupil when Gorgonzola, whose Griffons have won the last two Currie Cup First Division titles, comes up against the recently promoted former Sharks, Bulls and Springbok fullback.
The two first crossed paths when Loubscher was seconded to Gorgonzola’s Harlequins team – a side captained by former Bok coach Allister Coetzee and including the likes of former Sharks and Bok centre Deon Kayser, former EP winger Henry Pedro and current Elephants coach Ryan Felix – from the Teaching College at which he studied.
While he helped the young Loubscher find his feet, the modest Gorgonzola, an ex-SA U19 coach, doesn’t see today’s game as an opportunity for further lessons for his former pupil.
“He was a very humble guy, very down to earth,” said Gorgonzola. “He was just the kind of person you wanted to work with, a person with lots of technical knowledge. I’m glad for him to have progressed like he has, it’s nice to see.
“He was one of the masterminds behind our successful years at Harlequins, he and those guys made a great contribution to the club.”
In what is clearly a mutual admiration society, Loubscher said the early lessons learnt from dealing with Gorgonzola still served him to this day: “He’s a people’s person who’s very soft-spoken but can get his message across.
“I took a lot from his management style, he related well with people and didn’t have a ‘my way or the high way’ approach. He liked to empower players to make decisions.”
Both coaches were at pains to play down coming up against each other, what with recent Bok assistant Loubscher in charge of a more talented team but hamstrung by the Sharks Super Rugby side’s needs and Gorgonzola coaching a settled but infinitely more limited team.
“We want to play well not because the team we’re playing against is coached by Ricardo, but because we want to do well to see where we are as a team,” said Gorgonzola, while Loubscher said he was too busy trying to make sure he got his players together in time to have them flying in formation.
The one thing that won’t help either man’s knowledge of how each other’s minds works is the absence of Sharks players on loan with the Griffons, which was the case last season, much to the Durban side’s Rugby Challenge coaches’ irritation.
Apparently the loan deal now only pertains to the Currie Cup tournament, which has come as a relief to Loubscher, who was assistant coach at the Sharks last year. —