Provinces give up power in SA rugby shake-up
IT HAS been a horror year for the Springboks on the field – and now the shake-up in South African rugby has begun.
On a day described as a “pretty big watershed day” by SA Rugby chief executive Jurie Roux, major changes were announced by SA Rugby: today.”
The change in the ownership scale could see local teams being run in a similar style to European clubs, where millions of pounds and euros have been brought into those sides by private investors, and one of the positive spin-offs of that may be top South African players being retained in the country.
Springbok coach Allister Coetzee has complained about the late arrival of overseas-based players before matches, and keeping the leading players at home would help solve that problem.
“We have looked at all our committees and sub-committees, and those have been streamlined down to the statutory requirements in line with the King 4 (report on corporate governance),” Roux said.
“A very big decision for us was to take away the constitutional restriction of 49.9 percent in terms of private equity investment into the commercial arms of the provincial unions to 74 percent, but that is at the discretion of each and every union – whether they want to do that or not.”
Roux added that choosing the Bok coach often resulted in a delay for the general council to make the final decision months after the best candidate was identified by the executive.
“The council’s feeling in terms of that is that it is an operational appointment, and it is part of the responsibility of the executive. It’s the same for the CEO,” he said.
Another change, in line with Sascoc regulations, sees SA Rugby changing the provincial members to the nine geopolitical boundaries.
But Roux and president Mark Alexander insisted that it won’t change the make-up of commercial competitions such as the Currie Cup or Craven Week, which will still have 14 provincial teams taking part.
Alexander said that Coetzee – who is under pressure to hold on to his job following a disastrous first year in which the Boks lost eight out of 12 Tests – was not discussed on Friday. “We never discussed the national team. We will have a full review on Monday and Tuesday,” he said.